


all the sacred boundaries we've overgrown

by tunemyart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Happy Ending, Pining, Season 7 but no time travel, so much pining, time and ages are bananas but that's canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-04 07:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14588208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: After Lucy discovers that Roni is Regina, Lucy inevitably has some questions. If they end up focusing on Emma Swan over the next few weeks, that's Regina's own fault.In which Regina has complicated feelings about herself, her bar, Storybrooke, and - most infuriatingly after all these years - Emma Swan, and still manages to break a curse and reunite her family.





	1. Chapter 1

Inevitably, Lucy has questions.

 

It takes time for her to adjust to the idea that not only does someone believe her, but that she now has someone who understands the story better than she does; and once she does, there’s no stopping her. Regina will never say no to spending time with her granddaughter, and Jacinda trusts her enough to let Lucy spend increasingly more frequent periods of time with her, and so Lucy begins coming to Roni’s every day after school and chatting with Regina at the bar in the 3 to 4pm lull.

 

Most of the questions start out as Regina would expect.

 

“What was my mom like?”

 

“When did my parents get married?”

 

“Were you there when I was born?”

 

“Was my name always Lucy?”

 

“What was it like in the other world?

 

“Can I ever go there?”

 

Regina does her best to answer them as rapidfire as they come ( _A fighter, like she is now; Honestly, probably a little too quickly after they first met; No, but I was right after; Yes; Like living in a forest; Maybe._ ) and soon enough they turn deeper as Regina was dreading.

 

“Why did you decide to adopt my dad?” ( _I wanted someone to love.)_

 

“What was the world you came from like?” ( _Also like living in a forest.)_

 

“What were you like when you were my age?” _(Happy. Caged. Naive.)_

 

“Were you really Snow White’s stepmother?” _(Yes.)_ “Is she still in Storybrooke?” _(Yes.)_ “Are you really friends now?” _(Under protest.)_

 

And then,

 

“What’s Storybrooke like?”

 

“Why don’t we just go back there?”

 

“Can you call anybody there? Maybe they can help!”

 

The first thing Regina had done after Ivy had woken her up was scroll through her phone, looking for something, anything, that Roni might have programmed in there for her buried self. She’d spent hours trying to reconstruct phone numbers, coming back again and again to Emma’s Boston area code and the three numbers she could remember that followed, consistently getting stuck on the last three. She’d dialed that number so often in the beginning she’d memorized it, refusing to put it in her phone and make anything about that woman permanent; and now she wishes she hadn’t eventually caved and put her on speed dial. _Lazy_ , Regina berates her past self, tamping down a rusty, reflexive, and unwarranted surge of frustration with Emma Swan.

 

The truth is that Storybrooke still sings deep in Regina’s blood, even clear across the continent and without her magic, a creature that could never wholly remove its imprint from its creator. It had been hard to be there after Henry left, the utter uselessness of her being manifesting itself at every turn, confronted by Snow and Charming, by Belle and Rumpel, by Emma and Hook, and all their respective growing broods between them. It had been hard in another realm entirely, even with her son and his family growing around her, magic coursing through her veins, and her former life a portal jump away. It had been hard, but it’s harder still now that she’s bereft of any connection at all.

 

Lucy isn’t appeased by her answers, and “borrows” Henry’s laptop to run a search for an official website for Storybrooke.

 

“Why didn’t I think to do that?” Regina says, genuinely bewildered at the simplicity of it.

 

“It’s the curse,” Lucy says matter-of-factly, typing away; and of course, she’s right.

 

There’s a few breathless moments where Regina believes Lucy might have done it, that they’re about to click into a treasure trove of Storybrooke town officials and their contact information which, depending on mayoral priorities since she’d resigned, might even still feature her photograph.

 

The results that are actually returned are a mixed bag.

 

“What is this,” Regina mutters, leaning over Lucy’s shoulder to read the description of one site: _“There is a town in Maine where every story book character you’ve ever known is trapped between two worlds…”_

 

“It’s not real,” Lucy says, disappointment coloring her voice. “It’s stuff Henry’s fans put up.”

 

There’s only one result on page seven that looks like a legitimate website, if a little too sleek and user friendly to be a municipal website. There’s a list of contact information, all right, with _Regina Mills, Mayor_ headlining the page, trailed by _Mary Margaret Blanchard, Deputy Mayor, Emma Swan, Sheriff,_ and _David Nolan, Deputy Sheriff_ further down the page.

 

Lucy has her phone in hand and is dialing before Regina can stop her. Regina holds her breath in anticipation, and can’t say whether she’s relieved or disappointed the numbers return variously out of service messages and at least one semi-irate man sick of people calling him about that stupid book.

 

“Do you think they’re okay?” Lucy asks, despondent.

 

Regina laughs, slings an arm around her, holds her close. “Oh, Lucy. After all this time, I don’t think something is going to finish off Storybrooke without me there.”

 

Despite her words, the question keeps her awake that night. What if something _has_ finished off Storybrooke while she’s been away? She walked away. She left. It had been too hard, she’s missed Henry too much, she’d given up on them all, how could she have done such a thing?

 

Regina had given up on her own happy ending years before she’d had the gumption to leave, sure at this point that it was more than she honestly should have hoped for to be the undisputed mayor of the town, tucked away in her mansion with her sister and her niece, more extended family around her than she knew what to do with. It had been hard being surrounded by so much surplus happiness that was never destined for her. It had been hard, and something in her had been desperate at the sight of Henry again after so long, and she’d always been suspicious that he’d invited her to come with him out of pity, the perpetual third wheel, destined to be out of place for as long as she lived.

 

And here she is again. Outside, a train rattles her windows comfortingly, right on schedule. Downstairs, the bar is quiet. A few miles away, Henry sleeps soundly in his bed, unaware of anything but his deepening crush on Jacinda and his unbridled affection for Lucy.

 

She doesn’t think of Emma often anymore - hasn’t had reason to in ages - and doing so now makes her brain creak and her heart stutter just a little, an echo of old patterns they’ve long since given up. Regina can’t say why, or why now, but she’s suddenly overcome with the desire to find her and tell her: “We’re cursed again.” “Our granddaughter is amazing.” “Our son is _absolutely_ getting what he deserves for what he put us through when he was her age.”

 

She imagines what Emma would say to her in return: “A curse, an operation, and a tiny believer? Sounds like a typical Mills family adventure to me.”

 

“Emma,” Regina whispers into the dark.

  
  
  
  


Regina doesn’t notice how she’s clinging to Lucy’s visits until Zelena starts taking pity on her (“You two are sickening, stinking up the bar with your wholesome goodness, it’s bad for business. Bad enough that this one is already letting Wordsworth set up shop here like we’re a bloody Starbucks. Shoo, shoo.”) She has an understanding look in her eye, though, glancing Margot’s way when she emerges from the back with a rack of clean glasses.

 

Lucy doesn’t need to be told twice, and grabs Regina’s hand. On nicer days, they’ll claim the patio for themselves, spread out Lucy’s homework - which Regina insists she does some of, at the very least - and carry on conspiring. Regina’s been leery of involving Lucy too much in her actual plans since Facilier found her out ( _stupid,_ Regina berates herself, pulling a ten year old girl into this like she’s an adult) but she’s grateful when Lucy doesn’t stop coming even when Regina insists three days in a row that they focus on her homework.

 

“Come on, gra -” Lucy stops short at Regina’s look. “ _Roni_. I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”

 

Regina’s only response is to wordlessly put the hat Lucy had left in Facilier’s apartment in front of her, having saved it for just this moment. She’s glad to see that Lucy looks a little chastised.

 

“Whoops,” she says, grimacing. “Did he bring that to you?”

 

“He did, in fact,” Regina says. “And never mind what else happened,” she said, anticipating Lucy’s question.

 

“But -”

 

“No buts,” Regina says.

 

“So you’re saying something else _did_ happen?”

 

“ _Never mind._ ”

 

“You can’t leave me out of this!” Lucy says, pouting. “This was my idea!”

 

“I think you’ll find this was _my_ idea,” says Regina, tapping her chin. “ _Settle down,_ Lucy. I never thought I’d be feeling any kind of sympathy for Emma Swan.”

 

It’s an offhand comment, one that manages to surprise Regina slightly even as it’s leaving her own mouth, but Lucy’s ears perk up at the name regardless.

 

“Emma Swan?” she asks. “Like in my dad’s book?”

 

Regina drags her hands over her eyes and curses herself briefly - and Emma, while she’s at it, just for having the nerve to pop back into her head uninvited. Emma Swan, running around with her son behind her back, trying to break her curse without having any idea that was actually what she was doing.

 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” is all Regina says to Lucy. “You believe the rest of it’s real, don’t you?”

 

She can see the way something shifts in her eyes, and her mind overrun with fairy tales and stories tries to reconcile Roni the person with Regina the character, to see her as something more than a bridge a world that Regina can no longer access. Patiently, Regina waits under her scrutiny for her to make those final connections and realize that Regina is something that moves and breathes independently of anything, including Henry’s pen.

 

Lucy eventually turns around to where her backpack is resting on a chair, rummaging around until she pulls out Henry’s book, already well worn by Lucy’s fingers. She puts it down in front of Regina.

 

“So you’re saying that _all of this_ is real?” she asks earnestly. “Everything is true?”

 

“You think I’m lying?” Regina asks, wounded despite herself.

 

“No,” Lucy says quickly. “I thought you meant the stuff I believed was real, not that everything in the book is real. Because that would be a _lot_ for Henry to remember but not remember, you know?”

 

“You think he got some things wrong? Or left some things out” Regina parses, and Lucy nods, earnest to the end.

 

It’s not unreasonable. God knows Henry’s own storybook had been _very_ biased about whose story it told. Hesitantly, Regina takes it from Lucy’s outstretched hands, runs her fingers over the type. _Once Upon a Time._ “I haven’t read it,” she says, “but how about this: you ask me questions, and I’ll tell you if he got it right.”

 

Lucy takes her up on it with gusto, bringing her chair around next to Regina’s so that she can snuggle into her side for warmth in the chill of the afternoon air. Regina’s hands page through the illustrations, lingering on familiar scenes and faces, eerily removed through the way the author’s pen always seems to take away a dimension and add another all at once.

 

About a quarter of the illustrations are Emma, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, and occasionally with Regina herself. She does her best not to linger lest Lucy notice and ask deeper questions than she’s already asking about the savior (“ _Did she really break the Dark Curse by giving my dad True Love’s Kiss?” “Did she really kill a dragon with a sword?” “Did she really have more powerful magic than you?”)_ but it’s hard not to with the way her own face is so foreign to her. How much more foreign in context of Emma drawn beside her, inhabiting the same frame endlessly, timelessly, their magic intertwining and reaching off the page. It does something to Regina’s chest that mostly feels like an echo of an ache, easily dismissed if she turns the page.

 

“Don’t you two look cozy,” comes Jacinda’s voice, and they look up to see her standing in front of them. Lucy launches up and into her arms with a cry of _“Mom!”_

 

“I hope you’re not taking Roni away from her job,” Jacinda tells her, smoothing down her hair and looking at Regina questioningly. “Just because she’s too nice to tell you no doesn’t mean you can pull her wherever you want.”

 

“It’s fine, Jacinda,” says Regina, standing. “Kelly’s got the bar covered.”

 

“Then go say thank you to Kelly, baby,” Jacinda says, sending Lucy off with a push to her back. Lucy goes with a backward glance, but Jacinda’s already stepping closer to Regina, who tenses.

 

“Look, I know it’s hard to resist her big puppy dog eyes, but I don’t want her to be a problem for you,” she says quietly.

 

“What? No!” says Regina. “God, no. Look, if it was really a problem, I’d tell her no and have her do her homework. Trust me, I’ve had experience.” Jacinda looks at her skeptically, whether because Lucy rarely comes back from Roni’s with her homework complete or because Roni has no kids to give her experience, Regina can’t tell. She hurries on. “It’s nice having Lucy around. I don’t know why she’s taken a shine to me, but I don’t mind it. I just don’t want to step on your toes if this is you telling me _you’re_ uncomfortable.”

 

Regina holds her breath, but Jacinda laughs immediately. “Uncomfortable?” she says. “You’re my friend, and you’ve been so kind to us. And anyway, you two are adorable. As long as you’re sure?”

 

Regina nods again in confirmation, and Lucy bounds back over and seizes Jacinda’s hand.

 

“Okay. Say goodbye to Roni, Lucy.”

 

Lucy waves at Regina as her mother pulls her away. Zelena sidles up next to her just as the door closes behind them.

 

“That one’s a load of trouble,” she tells Regina. “She’s already co-opted me into your little operation.”

 

“What did you agree to?” Regina asks suspiciously, because she _knows_ Lucy.

 

“Potions?” Zelena says, shrugging. “I figured it’d be a good job keeping her out of your hair, anyway.”

 

Regina snorts. As if there’s any keeping Lucy out of either of their hair.

  
  
  


Zelena’s return to San Francisco comes as a bit of a blow despite everything, and Regina spends a few days in a cold sweat, trying unsuccessfully to shake intrusive feelings of being more alone than ever - or at least, more alone than she had been since she’d left Storybrooke. It had helped having another adult who knew what she was going through at her side, day in, day out; and even with Henry’s, Lucy’s, Jacinda’s, Rogers’, and Rumpel’s presences slipping in and out of her bar, there are a few nights when she considers that she is, in fact, a little insane. In the stillness, she sometimes swears she can still feel her heart beating through the infrastructure of a town clear across the country, and even as her soul curls around the tables and walls of her bar. What would happen, she wonders, if she walked in a straight line away from them both? Would there be anything left of her?

 

On the third night without sleep, Regina wonders if Drizella felt anything like this wherever she’d ended up. Had Hyperion Heights branded itself into her very being? Would she too someday be sixty years old and discover that she had driven her soul so hard that it was threadbare, insubstantial, unreal?

 

On the fourth night, an unmarked envelope comes in the mail not long after in her sister’s handwriting: “ _Look what I forgot to give you in all the chaos and found in the move. Surprise! Courtesy of your favorite sis and granddaughter - by which I mean, your granddaughter probably doesn’t know it’s done. Kick this curse’s arse. Let me know how it goes. I’m only a flight away if you need me. Kisses!”_

 

Regina fumbles with the vial until she holds it in shaking hands: crystal clear, odorless, easy to slip into Henry’s drink. Her eyes close, and she presses it to her heart in speechless thanks before stashing it under the bar next to the photograph of Mayor Mills and her son. Regina takes a moment to breathe, centering on the way her own face stares reassuringly back at her. When her fingers obey her again, she dashes off a text to Zelena: “ _You’re my only sister. But you are definitely my favorite.”_

 

It’s enough to make the world around her stabilize from within. Regina sleeps seven hours that night. When Lucy comes in the next day, Regina feels less like she’s a ghost walking aimlessly among the living.

 

“So Emma’s my other grandma, right?”

 

Today, Lucy’s perched at the bar today since there’s no more Zelena to watch the bar. Many of the regulars recognize her by this point and are thoroughly won over. One such regular calls out _Heya Lucy!_ and Lucy turns and grins and waves, delighted.

 

“Don’t call me grandma,” Regina reminds her when she’s done leveling the patron with a look to encourage him to leave them alone.

 

“I _didn’t_ ,” Lucy says, and Regina smiles. She’d spent eight years being a grandmother, and she misses it… in that she was able to openly spoil her granddaughter rotten. She’d never deprive Lucy of calling her ‘grandma’, but she’d be lying if she said she missed the way the title reminded her of her age. Snow had leaned into the title at the tender age of twenty-five after the world had stood still for twenty-eight years. Snow had thought it was _ironic_ and that it had made her _cool,_ and in the eyes of her eleven year old grandson, Regina had begrudgingly admitted that she was right.

 

Well, about _that_ , anyway.

 

But the world isn’t standing still anymore, curse or no, and Regina is well aware that even if her body doesn’t reflect it outwardly, it’s lived out nearly sixty curse-free years. It doesn’t stop her spoiling her granddaughter where she can, even if it leans more toward a ‘Cool Aunt Roni’ vibe these days.

 

“Yes, Emma’s your other grandma,” she says, sliding a Shirley Temple, extra cherries, across the bar to Lucy, who grins and seizes it with both hands.

 

“Did I get to call _her_ grandma?” she asks cheekily.

 

Regina gives her a _look_ , but can’t help the edges of her lips quirking up. “Yes. But you called her ‘Emma’, too.”

 

“Really?” Lucy asks around the straw, eyes wide. “Why?”

 

Regina shrugs. She’d always suspected it had something to do with the fact that Regina, who had been a constant fixture through the entirety of Lucy’s young life, had always been _‘grandma_ ’. The sporadic and infrequent nature of Emma’s visits to them and their visits to Storybrooke likely hadn’t helped matters. She settles on a similar, but easier truth.

 

“Probably because Henry still does about half the time,” Regina tells her. “I think he realized pretty early on that it was hard to figure out who he meant when there were two us of who could be ‘mom’.”

 

“So you were together a lot?”

 

“After we mended our differences, yes.”

 

“Because she was the Savior?”

 

“Well,” Regina says. “Mostly because she was Henry’s mother too, and I didn’t like that.”

 

“But you’re friends now,” Lucy says, and it’s not a question. She’s read the book. Regina holds her breath as she seems to think for a moment, waiting for any of the myriad number of questions that could follow that assessment.

 

It’s not what she expects. “Do you miss her a lot?” Lucy asks.

 

It still takes her aback for just a moment, just enough that she replies without thinking. “Yes. Sometimes.”

 

It starts Lucy down a whole new line of questions ( _“Did she really save you?” “Did she really become the Dark One?” “Is she all better now?”_ ) that Regina does her best to answer until the door opens to reveal Henry with a laptop bag. He regards them curiously as he approaches the bar.

 

“I didn’t realize the drinking age had been lowered,” he told Lucy, who’s taking advantage of the imposed break in her interrogation of Regina to finally make a dent in her Shirley Temple.

 

“Well, Roni’s makes special exceptions for girls called Lucy,” Regina tells him.

 

“Ah. Makes sense. What’s up, Luce?”

 

Lucy looks torn between getting to ask Regina all her questions and getting to be around her father. Predictably, she gravitates toward Henry with a glance to Regina letting her know that their discussion isn’t over. Regina raises her hands in submission.

 

“Did I hear you talking about Emma?” Henry asks, and Regina’s heart actually stops beating for a second until he continues. “Like from my book? I mean, it might just be a case of egotistical author brain.”

 

“Yeah!” Lucy exclaims before she can stop her.

 

“I didn’t know you’d read my book, Roni,” Henry says, confused and maybe a little touched, if Regina’s reading him right. “I thought you were being polite about it.”

 

Regina has not in fact read the book. She hasn’t quite been able to bring herself to do it and immerse herself in that life again, difficult as it is to piece together herself from curse persona Roni and three lifetimes of being Regina. She’s cursing herself now for not having the foresight to avoid this exact conversation, since it would have come in handy to know what the differences were between her actual lived experience and Henry’s recounting of his via suppressed memories.

 

“Yup,” she says, smile determinedly pasted on her face. “Didn’t want your egotistical author brain getting too much bigger.”

 

“Well, don’t let me stop you,” he tells them, casting one last odd look towards Regina. “I can probably answer some of your questions, considering I actually wrote the book.”

 

But Regina suddenly finds that she doesn’t want to hear about an Emma who stopped existing long ago from someone who doesn’t remember her, and she doesn’t trust herself to not correct Henry if he says something wrong.

 

“Excuse me,” she says. “I gotta go do inventory.”

 

“You just did it yesterday,” Lucy says. _Traitor_.

 

“I missed something because some little imp,” Regina says, reaching over and tweaking her nose. “was distracting me. Holler for me if somebody needs something, will you?” she asks Henry.

 

“Sure thing,” he agrees, but keeps his eyes steadfast on her. “Hey, are you okay?”

 

“Fine,” she says, flashing him a quick smile, and melting away into the back.

 

When she comes out from ‘doing inventory’, Lucy’s gone, and Henry’s typing away at the bar.

 

“Jacinda came by?” she asks casually as she idly starts rearranging bottles just to give her hands something to do.

 

Henry shifts his eyes to look at her over his computer screen without raising his head. It’s such a _Henry_ gesture that all she can see is her little boy, fourteen years old and writing school reports and stories on his old laptop in the kitchen at Mifflin Street, giving her sass that _she_ certainly hadn’t taught him. Her heart clenches.

 

“Don’t give me that look, young man,” she sasses back without thinking.

 

Henry only snorts. “Okay, _mom_.”

 

They work in a halfway comfortable silence until Henry’s the one to break it, clearing his throat.

 

“Uh, I noticed you kept that picture.”

 

She doesn’t have to ask which one he means, and if she’s honest, she’s not surprised he went looking for it. Regina doesn’t mind the intrusion - it’s _Henry_ \- but she has appearances to keep up. She tsks.

 

“Snooping around my bar, were you?” she asks.

 

Henry shrugs. “You answered a text on my phone and then deleted it, so.”

 

He has a fair point. “Yes,” she says. “I kept the picture.”

 

“I just,” Henry begins. “With all the stuff, with Lucy, I mean. You guys were talking about _Emma_ . A character. That I wrote. Like she was _real!_ ”

 

It sets her heart pounding, and she schools her expression, even as she can’t stop herself from thinking, _I am also a character you wrote_ . She thinks of her face in illustration, removed enough from reality that Lucy hadn’t been able to identify her in reality. Mentally, she traces over her face in the book, and her face in the photograph. She wonders how unrecognizable she actually is. She wonders which version of herself is the character. She wonders what she would choose if she could close the distance that separated them, inhabit old skin, old roads, old buildings, old town. Magic. Family. Henry. Emma _._

 

“Is there a question in there?” she asks Henry calmly.

 

“Do you really think you might be Regina?” he asks her after a moment’s hesitation, squaring his shoulders in anticipation for her dismissal of the question.

 

She won’t give it to him. “The implication being that Regina would have a reason to talk about Emma?” she asks.

 

“Regina would have a lot of reasons to talk about Emma,” Henry says. “Regina’s first move in a bad situation she couldn’t fight her way out of would be to find Emma. Trust me, I wrote her.”

 

“And,” she says cautiously, “if you believe that somehow you are sitting in front of Regina?”

 

“God, this is crazy,” Henry says, rubbing a hand over his chin. “If I believed I were sitting in front of a character I wrote who believed that she was in the middle of a curse, _yes_ , I would absolutely believe she was trying to figure out how to find Emma.”

 

Regina isn’t looking at him anymore. Her gaze is fixed instead on the picture, young Mayor Mills and her ten year old son, arms around each other and beaming in the months before Henry was given a book and he’d started to hate her, in the year before Emma arrived and everything changed.

 

“Are you?” Henry asks. “Are you trying to find Emma?”

 

His voice is soft and concerned, splitting the distance between worry for her sanity and concern for his.

 

“No,” she says finally. “I’m not trying to find Emma. Don’t be ridiculous, Henry.”

 

She’d made a promise long ago that she’d never lie to him again. This is a half truth - she isn’t trying to find Emma because she’s already tried and failed - but it still makes her gut clench. When she looks up to meet his gaze again, she startles at the badly hidden longing escaping his expression. This is a man who’d wanted a mother so badly, he’d written himself two. This is a man who’d had two mothers. This is a man whose mother is directly in front of him.

 

“Have you noticed that your speech patterns have changed recently?” he asks her. “I’m not trying to say anything by it. I’m just saying.”

 

She pours him a couple of fingers of whiskey under the bar, tips the potion in, puts it down in front of him.

 

“Drink your whiskey, Henry,” she says softly. “Go back to being Hemingway.”

 

Obediently, he raises the glass to his lips and takes a sip. He doesn’t react to it, still regarding her like he has something to say but hasn’t figured out what it is, but she’s too tense to sigh her relief.

 

“If you were my mom,” Henry says, a forced laugh escaping him. “I’m just thinking, with Lucy and Jacinda. It would be funny if it were true, how my immediate family would be one hundred percent Latina women.”

 

Regina doesn’t laugh. Emma Swan’s voice rings in her mind, a decade old, meeting her daughter in law and granddaughter for the first time: _“Henry coincidentally chooses a wife who happens to be Latina? No, he didn’t miss you_ at all _.”_

 

Her eyes had been sparkling at the time, glimmers of a woman Regina had once known shining through like diamonds caught in the sun, and Regina had been staggered by a sudden sense of loss she couldn’t fit into the pines and the sunlight. What a fool she’d been, thinking it would stay where she’d left it, comfortable and inert amongst the streets and buildings and oceanfront around which it had grown.

 

“I’m going to go wash some dishes before the rush,” she says thickly. Henry’s kind enough to let her go without questions, too preoccupied by the questions she can see brewing in his mind written all over his face. “Holler if anybody needs anything. Or just mix it yourself since you’re apparently comfortable behind the bar. Whatever.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Maybe we need to focus on another strategy,” Lucy says the next time she comes by. “I know you can’t get back to Storybrooke, but maybe we can find Emma.”

 

Regina doesn’t pause in her vigorous wiping down of the counter. “I can’t find Emma. Emma’s in Storybrooke, and I can’t find Storybrooke.” Emma maybe doesn’t even know they’re gone. Emma might not come for them even if she knows they are. Emma has a husband and a new child, a whole new family she’s at the center of for once in her life. Regina knows what an addicting feeling that is.

 

“Maybe Emma left Storybrooke,” Lucy says. “Maybe she realized we’re gone, and she’s looking for us, and we have to help her find us!”

 

“Lucy,” Regina says steadily. “Emma isn’t even part of this curse. There’s absolutely nothing saying that even if we found her and brought her here, she could do anything about it.”

 

“But she’s the _savior_.”

 

“She was the savior because she was built into another curse,” Regina says. “Not this one.”

 

Regina can tell that Lucy’s mind is grasping at Emma-shaped straws, spun into gold by the magic of storytelling and a _lot_ of details left out. Lucy had barely known Emma even with her memories intact; and Regina idly wonders how much a difference it would make it she were aware of her own lack of familiarity with her other grandmother.

 

“But she has magic! She could come here - “

 

“Without magic,” Regina reminds her.

 

“ - and help you find a cure for Henry! She could take us somewhere where we could break the curse! She could find a way to make Henry believe!”

 

“Lucy, enough.”

 

“But -”

 

“ _Enough_ ,” Regina says firmly. “Where is this sudden obsession with Emma coming from?”

 

Lucy hauls out her well worn copy of Henry’s book in response, letting it thunk against the bar and looking at Regina with wounded determination like it’s all the evidence she needs. Regina narrows her eyes.

 

“You’ve been re-reading the book?” Regina guesses.

 

“I’ve been listening to _you_ ,” Lucy says, and Regina feels her heart begin to sink. “Nothing ever worked until you guys started working together. You always did magic together, you _need_ each other, that’s what you’re missing - you’re missing _Emma_!”

 

She says it like she’s finally fit the pieces together in a sudden flash of epiphany, and now everything makes _sense_. The longer Regina looks into those hopeful eyes, the harder it is to say anything that would take it away.

 

“I might be missing Emma,” Regina says, and Lucy’s face lights up. Regina holds up a finger in warning. “But Lucy, listen to me: _we don’t need Emma Swan to break this curse_.”

 

“We need _something_ to break this curse,” Lucy says, desperation starting to creep in when she realizes Regina isn’t swayed. “Why not Emma? It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

 

Regina wants to laugh, and laugh, and laugh, because long ago, a different Regina had lost count of the times she’d realized that Emma made sense in her life, and never in the ways Regina would have dreamed. She hadn’t realized she’d done anything as foolish as _need_ Emma until it was too late to stop, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years in with Emma peeling away from her side bit by bit, until she’d made herself a new family that didn’t include Regina at all. Regina’s had practice in being without Emma Swan, and she’ll be damned if she succumbs to being stupid enough, once again, to _need_ her to save her own family.

 

“I love you,” Regina tells her, reaching out and grasping her chin. “I love Henry. And I love your mother. All of those things make sense. And I don’t need anything else.”

 

Lucy’s two steps away from crying, but she holds Regina’s gaze intently. “But if we could just find her…”

 

At that, Regina looks away. “Lucy. _Querida._ Consider that I know Emma better than you. It’s been a very long time. Consider that even if we could find her, she might not be willing or able to help.”

 

Lucy’s eyes are very wide, like she can’t believe the words coming out of Regina’s mouth. “Of course she’d help!” she says. “She’s the _savior._ She’s _your_ savior! She’s our _family!_ ”

 

“Lucy,” Regina says, trailing off, stymied as to how to explain to a ten year old that _that_ savior no longer exists, never mind a ten year old who doesn’t have her memories and whose world is architectured by fairy tales.

 

“Hey, two of my favorite people!” exclaims Henry’s voice. Regina looks up as Lucy turns, and at the sight of their faces - Regina’s frustrated and Lucy’s recently tear-stained - Henry stops short. “Whoa. Should I come back?”

 

“No,” Lucy says before Regina can say anything, but she sinks into her seat in silence, and won’t say anything beyond one word answers when Henry tries to engage her. Henry looks helplessly at Regina, who tilts her head to the right and motions for him to follow her a short distance down the bar.

 

“What’s going on?” Henry whispers. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

 

“She’s caught up in her fairytales,” Regina says. “Give her a few minutes to sulk. She’ll bounce back fast.”

 

Henry’s eyeing her suspiciously. “You weren’t - you weren’t encouraging her, were you?”

 

Regina doesn’t deign to respond to the question, crossing her arms and staring at him until he relents.

 

“Okay, sorry, sorry,” he says. “What’s she hung up on in particular? Maybe I can talk her out of it.”

 

Regina uncrosses her arms with a sigh, letting her hands rest nervously on her hips. “Emma Swan,” she says.

 

“Still?”

 

“Apparently.”

 

Henry’s brow is furrowed as he looks back toward Lucy, something in his mind trying to break loose. “I wonder why she’s so stuck on her.”

 

“Because she’s the savior,” Regina says. “Or was, I suppose.”

 

“You actually have read the book, haven’t you?” Henry asks. Again, Regina doesn’t respond; again, discomfort passes over Henry’s face; again, he shakes it off. “I’ll go talk to her,” he says, starting towards Lucy.

 

It’s a bad idea - Regina can feel it in her gut. She can’t hear what Henry opens with, but the betrayal in Lucy’s eyes as they suddenly shoot towards her is like a knife in the gut. Henry’s voice, twenty five years old, still echoes in her mind: _You made me think I was crazy!_ She hurries down the bar, ready to intercede or talk her way out of this if she needs to.

 

“Roni’s not trying to be mean, she’s just trying to help you,” Henry’s saying when she arrives.

 

Lucy doesn’t respond, still leveling a hurt glare at Regina.

 

“Luce,” Henry says, frustration creeping into his voice, “Emma Swan isn’t real. You know that, right?”

 

Jacinda chooses that moment to open the door, all smiles when she sees them all together. Lucy runs to her and clings tight, and Jacinda’s face drops into worry immediately.

 

 _What’s wrong?_ she mouths over Lucy’s head, hand pressing comfortingly on the back of Lucy’s head.

 

Regina picks up the book Lucy left at the bar and waves it significantly, and Jacinda’s face melts into understanding.

 

“You ready to go, baby?” she asks Lucy softly, and Lucy nods into her shoulder. Regina’s already packing up her homework and book into her backpack, and Henry carries it to Jacinda, who slips it over her own shoulders. “Okay, let’s go. Bye, Roni. Henry.”

 

Jacinda sends them all one last worried glance, which Henry and Regina share as they watch Jacinda and Lucy slip out the door and into the stream of midafternoon foot traffic.

 

“She’ll be okay,” Henry says, but doesn’t sound like he believes it. Lucy hadn’t looked back at either of them as she’d left, and Regina tries to tamp down the panic alarm sounding in her own head - one that hadn’t gone off since the morning of the day Henry had run away to Boston.

 

“Yeah,” Regina says, eyes still on the door.


	2. Chapter 2

_It was Regina’s second trip back through the portal to Storybrooke that she discovered that the magic keeping Storybrooke hidden from the outside world had been fading since she’d left._

 

_“There’s been a vote,” Snow told her. “We’d like you and Emma to put the protection spell around the town back up.”_

 

_Regina balked, setting aside the mug of tea Snow had pressed into her hands as soon as she’d sat down on her couch. In the kitchen, Neal was doing his fourth grade homework assisted by Henry, and their quiet voices were all that broke the silence as Snow’s gaze remained steady on her, waiting for Regina’s response._

 

_“Cast another protection spell? You know that keeps people in as well as out,” she said. “People aren’t going to be happy about this.”_

 

 _“Like I said, there was a vote,” Snow said. “If you agree, I’m sure we can work out a schedule to let people come and go periodically. Not everybody is going to be happy, but Emma’s the only magic user in town since Gold left with Belle and Zelena and Robyn both followed you over there. We’ve had a few too close calls with strangers wandering into and getting into magic. For that matter, we’ve had a few too close calls with villains and creatures making their way into town and worrying they’d get loose on the outside world. We’re tired._ Emma’s _tired.”_

 

_Regina sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Why hasn’t she just done it herself?”_

 

_Snow shrugged. “She said it would take you to do it. Something about your magic being written into Storybrooke.”_

 

_That much was true, but Regina honestly didn’t know the extent to which that actually mattered in this case. She found herself walking to the town line not long after, anxious to see if Snow’s hypothesis was true. Emma found her there in a burst of wild magic that Regina would know anywhere, and had to tamp town on her own magic so that it wouldn’t instinctively search out Emma’s and coil around it._

 

_“Snow told you?” Emma asked, stepping close so that their feet lined up, four in a row._

 

_Regina cast a sideways glance at her, surprised that Snow’s words hadn’t been entirely a ploy to guilt Regina into putting up the boundary. Emma did look tired, and in a way that couldn’t solely be put down to just late nights with a tantruming toddler._

 

_“She did,” Regina said. “She also said you’d worked out what the issue but hadn’t dealt with it yourself. You don’t need me to cast another protection spell, Emma.”_

 

_“Maybe,” Emma said, shrugging. “Maybe not. After they held the vote, I came out here and started poking around to see if I even could do it myself. Ran into walls of your magic, even if it is fading.”_

 

 _“If it’s going to keep you sane, then just put it up,” said Regina. “You_ are _the only magic user in town now, after all. You deserve some rest, especially what with a three year old on your hands.”_

 

_Emma scoffed at that. “Mom got to you,” she noted. “It’s not so bad. I mean, I miss you having my back in a fight. They’re just tedious now.”_

 

_“As opposed to the thrilling adventures they were back then?” Regina asked, unable to stop her own scoff._

 

_“Yeah,” said Emma, surprising her with a flash of a quick smile. “A lot of things were more thrilling back then.”_

 

_Regina’s mouth was half open in surprise, but Emma moved on before she could comment._

 

_“Look,” Emma said, “I can tell you don’t want to put up this spell, and I feel like it’s for reasons beyond the obvious. This is still your town, in ways people here won’t ever get. If it’s not right, it’s not right.”_

 

_Perhaps, Regina might have allowed, if it had only been herself she had to consider, or if she were unselfish enough to stay in Storybrooke and maintain the magic indefinitely. She wasn’t aging - at least, not very quickly. She might live to be around to protect the original curse’s descendents, and their descendants, and maybe even their descendants after them. She might never be free. Some might argue it was the least she could do after having cursed them all to this land. As far as penance went, it wasn’t too awful a sentence for her crimes after they’d let her live, and even start over. She’d wondered on the way here if that very argument had come up and Snow was shielding her from it. Sentimental fool, constantly believing in Regina’s happiness._

 

_But the fact was that the residents of Storybrooke didn’t deserve to have to put up with the consequences of Regina abandoning them. Neither did Emma. Not like this, anyway, though it seemed like Emma might be punishing herself enough in Regina’s place._

 

_They weren’t the kind of friends who talked about these things anymore, though, if indeed they ever had been in the first place, even during that brief year that Emma had chased after her friendship and refused to let her go until the Dark One’s dagger bore her name for Regina’s sake. Regina would never stop hating herself for that moment and the way it had led them here, Emma’s circumnavigation and pained smiles keeping them and their family further apart than any of Regina’s running away from Storybrooke ever could._

 

_“Do you ever think about leaving?” she asked Emma._

 

_“What, like you did?” Emma asked sharply, and immediately shrank into herself in apology. “Sorry, that’s not fair.”_

 

_It was fair. Regina pursed her lips. “Well?” she pressed._

 

_“No,” Emma said. A lie. Regina hadn’t learned nothing from Emma and her superpower all these years. “I mean, there’s Hope,” Emma said as if it needed explaining. “And Hook.”_

 

_“You could take them with you,” Regina pointed out. “Nothing’s saying you have to stay here to have a family.”_

 

_But Emma’s gaze was fixed straight ahead, her fingers reaching out to touch a boundary that wasn’t there - at least, not yet. “Where would I go?" she asks._

 

_“Emma,” Regina couldn’t help asking. “Are you… are you happy?”_

 

_Emma turned to look at her, another of those pained smiles stretching across her face. “Are you?” she asked._

 

_Regina didn’t answer, instead planting her feet and putting up her hands, feeling for the fading magic she knew was there. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do this.”_

 

_Wordlessly, Emma followed her lead, and within moments, the protection spell shimmered in front of them, Emma’s magic woven tightly together with hers so as to be impermeable. Regina raised a palm to it and let it rest there where it glowed against her own magic, twined and trapped with Emma’s indefinitely._

 

_“You’re crying,” said Emma, a hint of worry in her voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”_

 

_Regina brushed her cheeks free of tears, moving out of Emma’s reach. “It’s fine. Let’s go, Miss Swan. Your family will be waiting for you.”_

 

 

 

 

 

Jacinda calls her frantic that night, and Regina wishes she could say she hadn’t been expecting it.

 

“Have you seen Lucy?” Jacinda says before Regina even manages to say hello. “She’s not in bed and Henry hasn’t seen her and I was hoping somehow she’d be with you - “

 

“Calm down, Jay,” Regina says, motioning to Margot - thankfully working tonight - to take over as she runs out. “She’s not with me. Have you gone to the police?”

 

“Not yet, oh my God,” she says, on the verge of tears. “Why does she _do_ this?”

 

“Okay, I’m on my way to the police station now,” Regina says, spotting Rogers through the window. “Do me a favor and check your credit card statement?”

 

It hasn’t been the twenty four hours required to officially start a report, but Rogers drops everything as soon as Regina explains the situation. Rogers is sitting at his computer by the time Jacinda pulls up her statement online.

 

“Roni,” Jacinda gasps. “There’s a charge for a Greyhound ticket - that’s not me. Do you think?”

 

“I do,” Regina says grimly, and relates the information to Rogers. “He’s pulling up schedules and routes now,” she tells Jacinda as Rogers works on the computer.

 

“Henry’s going to the bus station downtown,” Jacinda tells her. “Where can I go? Tell me what to do, Roni.”

 

“Hang on,” Regina says, putting her on speaker.

 

“Three possibilities based on when she last saw Lucy,” Rogers tells them. “Buses recently left for Spokane, Portland, and Vancouver.”

 

“Pull up the route map?” Regina asks, and he complies. Her finger traces the line going east toward Spokane, and follows it through Billings, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, New York.

 

“You think she’s going to New York?” Rogers asks.

 

Her eyes follow the line up. Boston. Portland. Bangor.

 

“I think she’s going to Maine,” Regina says.

 

“Bloody hell,” says Rogers at the same time Jacinda says, “Oh my God, you’re right.”

 

“First stop Ellensburg,” says Rogers, checking the schedule again. “If we leave now we might be able to make it.”

 

They take Regina’s car since it’s not technically police business yet, and Regina drives like a bat out of hell, Jacinda following five minutes behind them from her apartment. Rogers has the courtesy not to chastise her or write her a ticket, only holding on tight to the grip handle until Regina’s out of the city and I-90 stretches out in front of them. Jacinda’s got them on hands-free in her car, and Rogers has taken over control of Regina’s phone, still on speaker.

 

“What was she so upset about this afternoon?” Jacinda asks. “I couldn’t get a word out of her.”

 

“She’s got it in her head that one of the characters in Henry’s book can save us from the curse,” Regina says. “She’s gotten pretty focused on that in the last few weeks. I didn’t realize how dangerously until today. I thought there was _time,_ I thought I could talk to her when she’d calmed down.”

 

Jacinda ignores that. “What do you talk about when Lucy comes over?” she asks. “Lucy’s always secretive, and I’m happy for her to get along with you, but I haven’t heard her talking about this stuff in a while. I thought she was getting over it, but she wasn’t, was she? She was talking about it with you!”

 

A rush of shame washes over Regina - she has been playing with someone else’s child, a child that in this world she has no claim to - followed quickly by a creeping cold that paralyzes her hands on the steering wheel. What if she’s not allowed to see Lucy anymore?

 

“Alright, calm down,” Rogers says, noticing her reaction. “Whatever sent her running, we’ll figure it out and deal with it _after_ we’ve found Lucy. Agreed?”

 

Jacinda’s silence is stony, but it’s agreement enough. They pull into the bus station at Ellensburg just as few people are disemarking, and Regina and Rogers leave the car doors open in their haste to get to the bus before it starts up again.

 

“Police!” Rogers exclaims with his badge out. “We’re looking for a little girl, hispanic, about ten years old?”

 

The driver gestures, but Regina’s already making her way to the back of the bus where she can see Lucy tucked into the window seat of the second to last row. She’s spotted Regina, and is watching her approach, petrified.

 

“This seat taken?” Regina asks as she sits down next to her. Lucy doesn’t respond. “You’ve got a lot of people worried.”

 

“I have to do this,” Lucy says, but her voice is no more than a whisper. “If you won’t, I have to.”

 

Regina’s heart breaks, and she pulls Lucy into her side, feeling her tremble as the tears start. “Oh, Lucy. You don’t have to do anything but come home to your family. To your mom. To Henry. To me. We’re gonna beat this, but we can’t do it like this - not alone. Not split up from each other. That’s what the curse wants, remember?”

 

Lucy nods miserably against her chest, trying to contain her sobs.

 

“I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Regina whispers. “I know you feel like nobody believes you. And I’m sorry if I made you feel like I didn’t believe you either. I should have told you more, been more honest with you, but I’m a slow learner.”

 

“I just thought if I could find Storybrooke - find Emma,” Lucy tries to explain.

 

“Shh,” Regina hushes her. “I know.” She opts not to comment on the fact that they both know the curse prevents them from locating, let alone getting anywhere near Storybrooke. “The truth is that there’s a spell around Storybrooke that we can’t get past, even if we could find it. I can’t take it down alone.”

 

“Why?”

 

Regina sighs, grits her teeth. “I need Emma's help.”

 

Lucy holds her tongue for once on an _I told you so_ that Regina knows she has coming. “Why did you just tell me that?” is all she asks.

 

“Would it have stopped you?” Regina asks.

 

“Well,” Lucy says, thinking. At least her tears have stopped. “No. I still don’t understand why you won’t try to find Emma. You won’t even talk about her.”

 

“As I recall, it was talking about her that got us here,” Regina says wryly, but Lucy fixes her with a look.

 

“You’ll tell stories about her, things that already happened or that Henry wrote about. You won’t talk about her _now._ And,” she says, hurrying on past her anticipation of Regina’s protests, “don’t tell me that she’s in Storybrooke and you can’t find Storybrooke so you can’t find her.”

 

“Things with me and Emma are… complicated,” Regina hazards. 

 

“Complicated like she won’t help us?” Lucy’s expression is teetering on something Regina might label _abandonment_ if it deepens any further, and Regina feels a twinge of regret for having implied that Emma wouldn’t help them back in the bar. No need for a third member of the Mills family to feel abandoned by Emma Swan, especially in circumstances where there hadn’t actually been any abandoning on Emma’s part.

 

“No,” Regina says, sighing again. “Just complicated. Look - we’ll find Storybrooke together. We’ll find Emma together - but after we break the curse. Emma can’t help us with that, but this isn’t the first curse I’ve broken without Emma Swan. Okay?”

 

Lucy nods again, and burrows back into Regina’s side.

 

“Now. I’m going to handle this, but I need you to trust me. I know it’s not easy. It’s hard for me too. It’s lonely, isn’t it?”

 

“I just want my memories back,” Lucy says. “I just want my family back.”

 

“Me too,” sighs Regina. “Me too.”

 

Rogers is coming their way, clearly reluctant to break them up. “I hate to say this, but we need to get off the bus. Did you bring a bag?” he asks Lucy. Lucy puts a hand on her backpack taking up the seat next to her, and Rogers picks it up. “Alright, Come on then. Your mother will be here soon.”

 

It’s enough to put fear back on Lucy’s face, and if Regina weren’t also feeling more than a little trepidation at the prospect of seeing Jacinda, she might laugh.

 

“Do you think Emma might be out there looking for us?” Lucy asks when they’re off the bus.

 

“Lucy,” Regina says, voice tight. Jacinda’s car is speeding into sight as she watches. “For all of our sakes, please stop asking about Emma. Please - just trust me on this?”

 

As if Lucy can actually tell how much it pains her, she throws her arms around Regina’s waist and holds tight. Regina clings back, crying herself despite the determination that’s strengthening her spine. She can do this. She _has_ to do this.

 

“Lucy!” Jacinda’s voice comes from behind her. “Hey! Get away from my daughter!”

 

Regina lets go instantly.

 

“Mom?” Lucy asks, looking between the two of them in confusion.

 

Jacinda’s got her arms around Lucy before Lucy can react, placing her protectively behind her. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you are not seeing Lucy anymore,” Jacinda says fiercely. “This is not gonna happen again.”

 

“ _Mom_!” Lucy exclaims.

 

“I understand,” Regina says calmly.

 

“This isn’t over,” Jacinda says. “I need - I need to understand. I need to think. God, I’m so _angry_ with you!”

 

Regina doesn’t bother to defend herself, only nods her acceptance again.

 

“Mom, it’s not her fault, please!” Lucy shouts, pulling on Jacinda’s hands.

 

“Lucy, go with your mom,” Regina says. “It’s okay.”

 

“Don’t even _think_ about arguing, Lucy,” Jacinda says, and marches her away.

 

“No! _Roni!_ ” Lucy cries out, struggling in vain to get back to her until she’s buckled into the front seat of Jacinda’s car, staying put only after Jacinda gives her a talking to, followed by a long hug that even from this distance Regina and Rogers can see has them both in tears.

 

“Shall we?” Rogers asks her quietly. Regina nods and hands over her keys. She collapses exhausted into the passenger seat.

 

“Thank you,” she says when he starts the car, and he nods.

 

“I’m just glad to see she’s okay,” Rogers said. “I’m glad you came to me.”

 

Hyperion Heights is quiet when they pull in. Rogers parks her car on the road in front of Roni’s, and Regina wearily climbs out with another ‘thank you’, taking her keys, locking her car, letting herself into the bar and her apartment above.

 

Margot has let herself in, and she’s fallen asleep on Regina’s sofa. Tenderly, Regina puts a throw blanket over her and turns out the lights.

 

“Did you find her?” Margot asks groggily.

 

Regina turns, and is startled by how much she resembles her sister when usually, even after all this time, all Regina can see in her is Robin. She doubles back slowly, places a kiss on her forehead.

 

“Yes, dear,” she says, affection rolling thick through her veins. “Go to sleep.”

 

 

 

Henry’s at her door while Regina’s preparing to open in the late morning, and since he’s already seen her, she relents and lets him in.

 

He hugs her as soon as he’s in the door. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Lucy told me.”

 

She’s a little bitter that Jacinda is still allowing Lucy to interact with Henry, but mostly she’s glad. “It’s okay. I should have expected it.”

 

“No, it’s my fault,” Henry says. “I wrote the book. You were just trying to be her friend. And I think what I said was what really set her off yesterday, anyway. About Emma not being real?”

 

He’s watching her closely. Annoyed that he’s testing her, she bats him away. “Of course Emma isn’t real,” she says, and it’s true enough. Emma hasn’t been real in years. Maybe she’s not real at all anymore.

 

Henry leaves with promises to talk to Jacinda for her. He’s good on his word, and by the end of the next day, Jacinda stops by the bar, sans Lucy, after work.

 

“I’m sorry,” is what she opens with. “I needed some time to cool down. Lucy is driving me out of my mind with this fairytale stuff, but it’s not your fault she believes it.”

 

“But?” Regina asks evenly.

 

“I don’t want you talking about it with her anymore,” Jacinda says. “Henry says you’ve been trying to be a friend to her, and I appreciate that Roni, I do, but it made her run away! My baby was alone on a bus. To Maine!”

 

“I understand,” Regina says, feeling like a broken record.

 

Jacinda pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m not trying to punish you. But I’ve told Lucy she’s not allowed back here for a while. I know you love her, but please don’t try to contact her. I can trust you with that, can’t I?”

 

Regina has no choice, and so she agrees. She can’t make out whether she’s pleased or sad when Lucy doesn’t try to sneak into her bar throughout the day - and Regina checks more than once - but accepts it for what it is by closing time, when Lucy should long be in bed.

 

It’s nearly 10pm when Regina misses Lucy’s first call, busy shuffling the last stragglers out of Roni’s on a Monday night and closing up. By the time the lights are dim, the surfaces wiped down, the glasses in the dishwasher, the cash drawer balanced, the chairs upended on the tables, and the floors cleaned, it’s nearly midnight, and when Regina checks her phone she’s missed five calls, all of them from Lucy.

 

The heartache-driven lethargy she’s been nursing all day disappears in a heartbeat, and she stabs at the redial button as soon as she’s unlocked the phone.

 

“Lucy?” she says when the ringing stops. “What’s wrong?”

 

“You’ve got to come here,” Lucy says. She doesn’t sound like she’s in distress - she sounds _excited_ \- but Regina isn’t going to feel better until she has a straight answer.

 

“Where’s ‘here’? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Lucy says impatiently. “I’m at Henry’s. I don’t know when he’ll be back, but you have got to see this. Hurry up!”

 

Regina’s already locking up hurriedly and hustling into her car. “Does your mom know where you are?” Lucy’s silent on the other end, and Regina sighs, pulling into traffic. “Lucy. You’ve got to stop doing this, she’s gotta be worried sick!”

 

“Don’t call her, not just yet,” Lucy pleads. “I need you to see this.”

 

Regina hadn’t had any missed calls or texts from Jacinda or Henry, so it’s unlikely Jacinda’s realized that Lucy’s gone yet. Against her much better judgment, Regina relents. “As _soon_ as I get there,” she warns. “And you’ll stay on the phone with me the whole time.”

 

Lucy chatters on during the short drive to Henry’s apartment, and Regina hurries up the stairs and into the apartment, where Lucy is standing whole and well, if a little sheepish. But she gestures around her defensively, and Regina stops short.

 

“Whoa,” she says.

 

“Yeah,” Lucy says, nodding emphatically.

 

Surrounding them are what Regina might mistake for storyboards for Henry’s next novel if she didn’t see her own face represented on them, along with Hook, Rumpel, Zelena, Drizella, Gothel, Tremaine, and more. Her fingers trace over the lines Henry’s affixed indicating what he thinks are relationships.

 

“He knows,” Regina whispers.

 

“Over here,” Lucy says, “look at this one.”

 

There, her own face stares back at her, along with Jacinda’s and Lucy’s. Above each of them respectively is written, _My mom?_ and _My wife?_ and finally, most incredulously, _My daughter????_  Regina laughs out loud.

 

“Oh, Henry,” she whispers fondly. “You were always too smart for your own good.”

 

“He’s _so close_ to believing,” Lucy says. “We just have to convince him. He and my mom kissed earlier, and nothing happened. I think it’s because he has to believe.”

 

Regina’s nodding slowly, pulling out her phone and hitting Jacinda’s number. She picks up on the first ring.

 

“Roni?” Jacinda sounds out of breath and panicked. “Sorry, I don’t have time right now, my crazy daughter ran away again.”

 

“She’s with me,” Regina says quickly. “We’re at Henry’s. Can you come over?”

 

To her credit, Jacinda doesn’t start yelling at her. “Henry’s?” Jacinda asks, confusion bleeding across the phone line, and Regina relaxes incrementally. “I thought he was driving Swyft until late tonight.”

 

“He’s… not here,” Regina hedges, and Jacinda curses.

 

“Oh my God. Did she break in?” Jacinda asks. “ _Lucy Vidrio_ , you are never leaving this apartment again when you get back!” It’s loud enough that Regina momentarily pulls the receiver away from her ear. Lucy hears, as intended, and winces. “Hold on, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Can we not tell Henry about this?”

 

“I think that would be for the best,” Regina agrees. “We’ll be here.”

 

They hear Jacinda hurrying up the stairs not long after. “Lucy,” she says reprovingly, hands on hips. “We are gonna have to talk about this. Why are you doing this? Don’t you know what you’re doing to me?”

 

“But mom, just come over here. We can talk about it after, just come _on_ ,” Lucy says, staying out of reach, forcing Jacinda to come to her reluctantly. Jacinda does, only to stop abruptly as she realizes what exactly is surrounding her.

 

“Wow,” she says faintly. “He really - he really does believe.” But her face is confused, and Regina can feel her teetering on her own precipice of belief.

 

“Jacinda,” Regina says, “are you alright?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jacinda says, looking around until her eyes land on the board with the three of them ( _My mom? My wife? My daughter????_ ) and stay there. “Do you believe this, too? Is that why you and Lucy have been spending so much time together?” Regina doesn’t answer, and Jacinda grabs her hand before she can move away. “I’m not mad, I just don’t know what to believe, anymore,” she says, laughing a little hysterically.

 

“Lucy, can you get your mom some water? I don’t think Henry would mind,” Regina asks, and Lucy bounds off, tellingly familiar with Henry’s kitchen.

 

“I didn’t know they thought you were his mom,” Jacinda says. “I guess it makes sense.”

 

“It does?” Regina asks, eyebrows raised.

 

“No,” Jacinda says, laughing again. “Oh my _God_ . Um. I don’t know - Henry came over earlier and showed me tests from the hospital, from when Lucy was sick?” Regina nods to show she understands. “He’d gotten himself tested to see if he could help. And the tests came back showing that he’s her father. I called the hospital myself, it’s _real_.” Jacinda looks at her hands. “How is any of this real.”

 

Lucy returns with a glass of water for all of them, her little hands struggling to hold them all together and not drop anything. Jacinda and Regina hurry to help her out, just as Henry walks in, keys held high.

 

“Uh,” he says, nervously looking from the three women on his couch to the board immediately to their right - _My mom? My wife? My daughter????_ \- and drops his defensive stance. “You aren’t the burglars I was expecting.”

 

“Henry,” Jacinda says, standing. “Is it true?”

 

Put on the spot, Henry looks around, his eyes resting on Regina. “I don’t know how much I got right, but I think some of it’s true.”

 

He’s looking to her for confirmation, and hesitantly, she gives it with a minute nod. He exhales, the tension draining from his shoulder. “It’s true?” he asks again. “Lucy’s my daughter? Jacinda’s my… my wife?” Jacinda takes his hand like a lifeline, and fixes her eyes on Regina as well. “You’re - you’re my…”

 

“I’m your mother,” Regina says, heart pounding in her throat, willing him to believe. “And my name is Regina Mills.”

 

She can see doubt starting to flicker on his face, and she presses on. “When you were there months old, I adopted you from the state of Massachusetts. When you were five, you broke your arm jumping out of the swings. When you were eight, you wrote your first story. When you were ten, you ran away and brought home your birth mother. You spent two years hating me for lying to you, and I swore to never do it again. I broke that promise.”

 

“When?” Henry asks.

 

Regina smiles, bittersweet. “Now. The last few months.”

 

“But not _right_ now?” he asks.

 

“Not right now,” she confirms, finally standing before him, resisting the urge to reach out to him when he shakes his head in disbelief.

 

“I dreamed you were my mom,” he says, voice shaking. “When it didn’t make sense. And then I found that picture that you kept, and you wouldn’t say you _weren’t_ Regina, and - I thought I was going crazy.”

 

She pulls it out of her pocket now, their younger visages staring back at them. He gazes at longingly, hungry for a history and a family he’s only just now believing he can claim as his own.

 

“It wasn’t a dream, baby boy,” Regina says, smiling tearfully, no longer holding herself back from touching his cheek. “Believe for me. Believe for your family.”

 

She sees the exact moment the shift occurs in his eyes, and she’s so overcome with relief that she leans up on tiptoe and kisses his other cheek, holding on through the ensuing burst of light that rushes through them all and out the window.

 

Henry pulls back and stares at her like he’s seen a ghost. “Mom?” he asks. “Oh my God. _Mom_.”

 

She’s already crying, clutching him tight as he hides his face in her shoulder, looking up only a moment later for a shell-shocked Jacinda - _Ella_ \- and a bouncing Lucy, letting her go to kiss his wife and hold his daughter close. They pull her into their multi-armed embrace before she can feel any loss, sinking to the floor as one tangled mess. Ella is whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” into Regina’s ear, and Regina can’t speak, just tightens her grip on Ella’s shoulder and holds on.

 

“You did it, grandma,” Lucy says from where she’s ended up in Regina’s lap.

 

“ _We_ did it,” Regina tells her when she finds her voice, and for a few precious long moments, everything is perfect, and Regina wants for absolutely nothing.

 

 

 

 

When they’ve had time to collect themselves and move to the couch, Henry’s first question is about Storybrooke, because of course it is. Regina patiently lays out what they know, even manages to finally finish writing out Emma’s complete number at Lucy’s behest. She holds her breath in the seconds she waits for their phones to connect, and is met with an out of service message.

 

“Are you sure it’s right?” Lucy asks, craning her neck to see the number in front of them.

 

“No, it’s right. That’s it, I remember it too. Maybe she changed it?” Henry says, but looks worried.

 

Regina shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t remember any other numbers.” Emma’s had been the only number she’d resisted putting in her phone. She hadn’t had anything to prove with anyone else by the time she’d needed their numbers in her phone, Henry’s safety a desperate, common interest between her and her enemies.

 

“I could try,” Henry says. “We both will.” Regina nods at his determination, because she can’t deny him anything.

 

“Can you find it now?” Ella asks. “On a map, or if we drove there?”

 

“It’s not on any maps,” Regina says, “but I could probably get us there if we were looking.”

 

“Well,” says Ella. “Maybe we should all pack up and get ready to go?”

 

“What, now?” Regina says, startled by the immediacy of the idea and the idea of actually leaving Hyperion Heights.

 

“Why not? Drizella’s gone, my stepmother’s gone, there’s nothing left, is there?” Ella asks. “I want to go home, and it sounds like Storybrooke is the only place in this world that can get us there.”

 

There’s actually the question of Facilier and Tilly and Rumpel and the dagger, and a coven of witches and Mother Gothel on the loose besides - but Ella’s right. She can’t do anything without magic, God knows she’s tried.

 

“You broke the curse, mom,” Henry tells her, as if reading her thoughts. “It’s okay to go get help.”

 

Still, she hesitates. “Give me an hour. I’m gonna go see some of the others and see if they want in.”

 

“You’re coming with us,” Henry says. “Right?”

 

“Oh, Henry,” she says, leaning up and kissing his forehead just because she can again. “Where else would I go?”

 

 

 

 

 

Robyn is rushing around her apartment and on the phone with Zelena when Regina finds her. She’s pulled into an embrace (“ _Aunt Regina!”_ ) and submits herself to the tinny noise of her sister squealing over the speaker, gratefully sinking into the feel of family settling around her for the second time that night. Regina tells her she’s closing Roni’s indefinitely, and Robyn’s face immediately brightens even further as she tells her she’s going to San Francisco to join her mother.

 

Regina doesn’t begrudge her. She throws some clothes into a bag while she’s there, and puts a sign on the door informing her patrons of the change. It’s not elegant, but it will do the trick. There’s a pull behind her heart as she closes the door, and she tries to tamp it down - she’ll be back, she tells herself, this isn’t her home anyway. _But it could be_ , another voice whispers. She hushes it, tries to content herself with running her finger over the logo on the window: _R, o, n, i, apostrophe, s._ A place that once belong to a woman called Roni.

 

Rumpel congratulates her when she finds him in his office - deserted except for him. “Your doing, dearie?” he asks, and laughs when she confirms it, something like pride somewhere in there, if she searches hard enough. He declines to come with them, and Regina’s relieved that someone with magic - even if magic is inaccessible here - will be on hand.

 

“Go finish this,” he tells her, pressing a hand to her arm, and she’s unaccountably overcome with emotion in a way that forces her to nod and leave abruptly.

 

Hook and Alice also decline to come with. “Storybrooke isn’t the place for me, love,” he tells Regina. “I don’t think they need another of me there. And I don’t want to be surplus.”

 

Regina wants to argue that he’s not _another_ Hook - he’s a different person entirely, and her friend, someone she trusts, not surplus at all, completely the opposite of the Hook she’s already dreading seeing again - and he seems to read it in her expression.

 

“Not like that,” he tells her. “You know what I mean. Come here.”

 

“This seems like a real nice place to make a new start,” Alice says after Hook has let Regina go. “Maybe I’ll go down to San Francisco with Robyn. Eventually. Maybe we’ll see the world, this world, the way she wants to.”

 

The world is just starting to grow lighter in anticipation of sunrise when she makes her way back to Henry’s apartment. Henry’s car doors are thrown open as he fits bags into the trunk and the backseat where Lucy’s sleeping soundly against Ella’s side.

 

“That it, mom?” he asks, gesturing to Regina’s bag.

 

“That’s it,” she says. Henry throws it in and closes the trunk gently.

 

“Guess you’re riding shotgun,” he says, grinning. “Brings back memories, huh?”

 

He’s talking about their last road trip to get Zelena. Regina had marveled at the time how he’d been willing to spend so much time with her, a stranger, on what must have appeared to be a whim. _I dreamed you were my mom_ , Henry had said earlier tonight, and her soul warms, like the sun swelling up and into the world around them.

 

“It does,” Regina agrees. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

 

If neither of them know which home she means - if they’re leaving another home behind them as they pull away from Henry’s parking lot - they don’t mention it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter after this since I miscalculated how long it would be. Thank you for reading!!


	3. Chapter 3

It’s a forty-eight hour drive without stopping, and if they hadn’t had Lucy with them, they might have tried it. As it is, Lucy’s restless even with the ten hour days they agree to, even accounting for frequent rest stops and nights in mid-grade motels. Regina doesn’t blame her - she’s restless herself. The landscape changes from mountains to plains to cities - Chicago, Cleveland, New York, places Lucy thankfully hadn’t had a chance to get to alone before they’d tracked her down on the bus - and the pull on her heart that is Storybrooke gets stronger, almost like it’s sensing her imminent arrival.

 

Regina isn’t sure if it’s even possible or if she’s making it up, if it’s nerves and dread and longing all rolled into one, but it’s making her slightly crazy by the time they get to New York on the fourth day. In a fit of nostalgia, Henry insists on staying in the city itself in a hotel not far from the apartment that she’d set up for him and Emma all those years ago in the year they’d spent without her.

 

Regina understands, but wishes he hadn’t. Until this point, a part of her has been able to continue its denial that they’re really going back. But this place, New York - she’s been here before, she’s been here with Henry, with Emma, with Zelena and Robin and Henry’s first girlfriend and Rumpelstiltskin. This close, their phantom presences and the memory of her own former self all around her, it’s hard not to feel Storybrooke’s pull like a tether and wonder if she’s doing the right thing. She feels an irrepressible desire to be surrounded by Roni’s comforts, bottles and glasses and chairs and tables, humidity and rain, an upstairs apartment with her best friend’s daughter crashing on the sofa.

 

“Mom? You okay?”

 

Henry’s rubbing his eyes blearily behind her when she looks around from where she’s curled up on the sofa in their suite.

 

“I’m fine, Henry,” she says. “What are you doing up?”

 

“Thought I heard you out here,” he says, settling down in the chair next to her. “Lucy taking up the bed?”

 

Regina smirks. Lucy is in fact taking up the entire bed she’s sharing with Regina, but that isn’t what had driven Regina out here.

 

“Just couldn’t sleep,” she says. “It’s only another full day’s drive from here.”

 

“Are you nervous?” Henry asks.

 

“Maybe a little,” Regina says. “It’s been a long time.”

 

He’s quiet a little while, and they watch the play of the city lights outside the window together.

 

“So,” Henry eventually broaches a little too casually. “Lucy’s been saying some things that have gotten me thinking.”

 

“About?” Regina asks suspiciously, because this can’t be anything good.

 

“Oh, you know. Emma.”

 

Regina lets her head fall back with a thunk, squeezing her eyes shut and fighting the urge to despair. “ _Lucy._ ”

 

“She’s told me some stories about her that must have come from you,” Henry says. “Stories I’ve never even heard before. Stories I wouldn’t have even known to have put in the book.”

 

“Such as?” Regina asks, trying to keep her voice even.

 

“Such as… Emma jumpstarting your magic by touching your arm,” he says. “Or only remembering who she was in that realm you followed her into because you were about to die. Or the fact that she promised you a happy ending and then threw herself into the darkness to give it to you.”

 

Regina’s cheeks burn, and she’s grateful for the dark. She doesn’t recall that she’d been quite so transparent in the stories she’d told Lucy. “I didn’t tell her all that,” she says weakly. “And I’m quite certain I didn’t tell her that last one in particular.”

 

“You didn’t have to,” Henry says. “You told her how she became the Dark One. _For you_. I was there when Emma promised you a happy ending. I can do basic math.” When Regina is quiet, he continues, “And - I don’t hear you denying it.”

 

“I’m not,” Regina murmurs. “It’s true.” As if she would ever deny that moment, Emma’s determined eyes clear even through the darkness swirling around her and trying to make purchase on her soul. _You’ve come too far to have your happiness destroyed_ , Emma had said, dagger in hand, and that had been that.

 

“So I’ve been putting a few things together,” Henry says. “Years too late, I mean - so much for the powers of the Author.”

 

“If you’d used them at the time, I’m sure you would have realized,” Regina says.

 

“I’m not,” he says. “I’m sorry, mom.”

 

Regina shakes her head. “It’s not your fault.”

 

“No,” he agrees with a sigh. “But I could have been more sensitive. About a lot of things.”

 

She laughs at that. “Henry, you were a fourteen year old boy,” she says. “Even you couldn’t have been sensitive enough for all that.”

 

He laughs with her. “Maybe,” he concedes. “But still. I’d always wondered why you were so desperate to leave Storybrooke. I thought for a long time that something had happened and you just weren’t telling me. But something did happen, didn’t it? Emma was pregnant.”

 

She remembers as well as he does the way she’d badly deflected his questions about Emma when she’d first seen him again after he’d left. She and Emma had argued about it before she’d gone with Hook to rescue Henry from Drizella. Emma had been barely four months along, and Regina had already been done with anything having to do with an Emma glowing defiantly with pregnancy. _It’s a baby, not cancer,_ Regina had said, and Emma had responded, _Just let me tell him, it should come from me._

 

 _When will you tell him?_ Regina had replied, burning with resentment on her son’s behalf as well as her own. _When the baby’s a full ten years old?_ And Emma had refused to talk to her after that.

 

“You make it sound so trite,” she mumbles. “I suppose it is, in a way.”

 

“Never,” Henry says. “It was hard enough for me. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you.”

 

“Henry,” she breathes, stricken by his confirmation of everything she’d feared. “You never said.”

 

He waves a hand. “It didn’t matter. I mean, it _did_ , but there was always you. And there was Ella, and then Lucy. We had our own family, and it was enough. It was wonderful.”

 

“Henry, _always_ ,” Regina says, reaching out for him.

 

“I missed her,” Henry says, squeezing back on her hand. “I still miss her. I never understood why she didn’t visit very often, especially after Lucy. But I was always so grateful you were still with me.”

 

“I wasn’t lying back then,” she says, because it’s important for him to know. “When I said I was miserable without you - I was. Storybrooke had become something like a prison without you there. I always wondered if you’d thought less of me for jumping at the chance to come with you, especially so soon after you’d met Ella. Who wants their mother crashing their dates?”

 

“Who wants their mother unreachable until you find a way to open a portal?” he counters, not without bitterness. “Even without the curse, I haven’t seen Emma in years. I didn’t want that, either.”

 

“Well. That’s different.”

 

Henry exhales. “Yeah. I guess.”

 

“When we get back, you two should talk,” she says, looking him over. He’s already dozing off again, and she weighs between letting him sleep in the chair and waking him up enough to join his wife in bed. Fondly, she lets him stay where he is, knowing he’ll no doubt insist on staying awake with her if she tries to send him to bed.

 

“So should you,” he snorts, mumbling.

 

“Hmm,” Regina says noncommittally.

 

It’s not long before he’s out like a light. Eventually she manages to doze off, and dreams of standing alone at the town line, the old familiar blacktop road stretching endlessly through a town that’s hidden from her eyes.

 

 

 

 

  
  
They pass through most of New England the next day, Regina’s chest tightening as they cross the border into Maine and the landscape and atmosphere turns painfully familiar. Once they leave Bangor behind them, they start operating solely on Regina’s instincts and memories, edging nearer and nearer to the coast.

 

Lucy and Ella go quiet in the backseat the more secluded the road becomes, perhaps in response to Regina’s concentration and the quiet conversation she and Henry are having about which turns where, and how far to go, both of them leery of accidentally passing through Storybrooke without noticing.

 

“Here,” Regina says suddenly, and Henry stops the car unquestioningly.

 

“Here?” Lucy pipes up, sounding a little disappointed. “I don’t see anything.”

 

“Kinda the point, Luce,” Henry says. He opens his door and clambers out, motioning for Ella and Lucy to do the same. Regina has already gotten out and walked up to where she can sense the boundary, even now, her own magic calling to her where it still twines infinitely with Emma’s. She closes her eyes, reaches deep inside where her wells of magic are still dry and empty, completely impotent for the task ahead of her. It’s hard not to clench her hands in frustration, knowing that she may well have led her family here with no way to get to get through, even if someone from Storybrooke does discover them here.

 

“It’s here,” she calls behind her. Her palms still rest a millimeter away from where the boundary is. “I can feel it, but I can’t get through.”

 

“You said you needed Emma to do it,” Lucy reminds her. “Should we just wait for her?”

 

Regina thinks back to when she’d been in charge of the running of Storybrooke. Part of law enforcement’s regular patrol route had gone all the way to the town line, just to make sure nothing was amiss. There was nothing to say that Emma or David or whatever new recruits were making the rounds these days had continued to do so in the years they’d been away, but there was nothing saying they weren’t either.

 

“If they still do things like they used to, patrol should come by twice a day,” Regina says, checking her watch. It’s nearly 6:30pm, a half hour from the start of the next patrol if they’re still operating on the same schedules. It’s been _years_ , there’s absolutely nothing saying that they are, but Regina feels it deep in her gut that they should stay put.

 

“So we should wait,” Ella says. “Okay, no problem. We have some food left in the car. Should we have a picnic while we wait?”

 

They set up a blanket on the ground and spread out the remains of their road trip food on it, eating family style until Lucy’s snuggling against Henry for warmth in the damp Maine evening, and Regina’s looking up every half minute, even knowing she won’t be able to see anything from this side. Henry puts a hand on her shoulder, which does nothing to calm the riotous mass of nerves that’s replaced her stomach.

 

“It’s okay, mom. It’ll be okay.”

 

“I know,” Regina says. “I don’t know why I’m reacting like this.” Henry gives her a look. Regina relents. “Okay, fine. I know exactly why I’m reacting like this.”

 

“It’s just Emma, mom,” Henry says. “She’ll be cool.”

 

“When have you ever known your mother to ‘ _be cool_ ’, Henry?” Regina asks dryly, and Henry laughs.

 

“Okay, you may have a point. But try to take it down a notch, anyway, okay? It’ll be fine. Have faith.”

 

Faith, Regina thinks. She would do anything for Henry, and so she tries.

 

“She’ll be there, grandma,” Lucy says. “That’s what you’re worried about, right?”

 

“It’s one of the things I’m worried about,” Regina mutters. There’s what to do once she’s inside Storybrooke again. There’s what she’ll do after this crisis is over. There’s confronting a whole life she’d run away from. But first, there’s seeing Emma again. There _has_ to be seeing Emma again, or all of this was for nothing.

 

“You said she’d help us if she could,” Lucy says. “Why are you so afraid?”

 

“Remember I said it was complicated?” Regina says.

 

“I remember it wasn’t a real answer,” Lucy says, folding her arms, and it would almost be enough to push Regina’s worry away, if it isn’t for the fact that she’s distracted by a shift in the timbre of the magic she can still feel emanating, ghost-like, from where she’s certain the boundary is.

 

She’s up and approaching it again before she thinks to say anything to her family, but when she reaches it, can’t bring herself to do anything more than stand in place - because what if she’s _wrong?_ What if Emma isn’t on the other side? What if everything she’s sensing is a lie, and Storybrooke isn’t existing on her magic anymore? What if there is no more Storybrooke at all?

 

“What is it?” Lucy’s joined her, heedless of Ella’s calls for her to let Regina be. “Do you sense something? Your magic?”

 

Regina thinks maybe - but no, her reserves are still pitifully empty, straining to recharge so close to what they recognize as her own magic. She shakes her head. “I don’t know if I even can do magic on this side of the line.”

 

“Sure you can,” Lucy says. “You just have to believe. Here, put your hands up and touch it - you said you can feel it, right?”

 

Lucy’s grabbing her hands and putting them palm up against the open air. If Regina were on the other side, magic would be radiating around her touch, sparking like to like. She tries to imagine it.

 

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” Regina says. A cold sweat is breaking out over her body, which has started to shake despite her mind’s firm reprimands. “I don’t even know if she’s there.”

 

“It’s going to work,” Lucy says. “I know you’re afraid, but it’s okay. I’m right here. And Emma’s there too, you just can’t see her. Right, Emma?” she calls.

 

There’s no response, of course, and Regina laughs wetly, trembling hard, because it’s just her with her palms facing nothing, a mime building herself a wall out of thin air. She must look like an idiot, a sentimental fool putting her faith is something she can’t see.

 

“I can’t,” Regina says. “Lucy, I can’t.”

 

“You _can_ ,” says Lucy, pleading. She slings an arm around Regina’s waist in support. “Don’t be scared. Close your eyes, I know you felt it before. Just… don’t listen to me, okay? Listen to whatever you felt. Listen to Emma.”

 

She breathes out a shaky breath, and closes her eyes. The wind is rustling through the trees, and Lucy’s warmth is steady against her side. Under her hands, she can feel it if she concentrates, if she doesn’t let her own doubt get in the way of it, and she does her best to cast it aside and lean into it.

 

 _Emma,_ she prays, her mouth forming the words. _Emma, please, please be there._

 

The world quiets, Regina’s mind closing down to nothing but the phantom feeling of her magic inside her swelling potent and constant against the tips of her fingers. The world resides here, in the spark and twine and fight of her magic bound up with Emma’s, eight years old and indistinguishable to anyone who isn’t as familiar with their magic as they are themselves.

 

And there - through the desperation and the disbelief, the years of anger and hurt and separation, Regina arrives in a place of utter stillness, a singular presence crystallizing in her mind.

 

“Emma?” she whispers in wonder.

 

Suddenly, it’s as though her magic explodes in her, roaring to life and laying waste to her senses after two years without it. The barrier falls away in a single thoughtless instant; and Regina, dazed at the onslaught, feels it first in the warm press of palms against her own. She opens her eyes, and freezes at the sight of Emma Swan: windblown hair, red-eyed, and so absurdly beautiful Regina thinks she can’t possibly be real.

 

“Emma?” she asks, still not entirely convinced that she’ll get a response..

 

But Emma gasps, real and solid where their palms still touch. “Regina?” she says.“You can see me?”

 

Mutely, Regina nods, and the reality of what’s happening crashes around her. Unable to restrain herself, she launches herself forward and bursts into tears, shamelessly weeping against Emma’s neck.

 

“You’re real,” she sobs. “You’re here.”

 

Emma’s arms are tight and immediate around her, her hands grasping at Regina’s back and shoulders as if she’s the one who has reason to doubt Regina’s existence, and she buries her own face against Regina’s shoulder, twining them together as if in place of their magic that had stood here for years.

 

“I thought I was seeing things,” Emma’s saying, and Regina can only half make sense of it. “But then you got up, and you sensed me - ”

 

It’s some time before they pull back just enough to look at each other. Emma’s palm comes up to press against Regina’s cheek, and Regina is long past the place where she can do anything but lean into it, pathetically grateful.

 

“You disappeared,” Emma says. “You disappeared for _years_ , and you didn’t come back. I looked for you, but you weren’t there, and the whole land was destroyed, and I didn’t know what to think.”

 

“We were in Seattle,” Regina says, voice raspy with lingering tears.

 

Emma laughs incredulously. “ _What?_ ”

 

“It’s a long story,” Regina allows. “We were cursed.”

 

“We should make that the town motto,” Emma mutters, but it’s ruined by the way she can’t stop smiling.

 

Regina clears her throat and taps at Emma’s arms. “I think our son and his family would like to say hello, too,” she says, nodding behind her.

 

Emma’s looks over her head to where Henry, Ella, and Lucy are waiting, and brightens even more. “Kid!” she calls, and that’s all Henry needs before he’s bounding over to them and engulfing them in a hug, clinging tight to the both of them the way he had as a child, years and years ago.

 

“Moms,” he says. Regina tries valiantly not to cry again, but it’s a losing battle. This is a man who’d wanted a mother so badly he’d written himself two. This is a man who has two mothers.

 

 

 

 

  
  
Eventually, once Ella and Lucy have had their turn greeting Emma and the shock and adrenaline have worn off, they split up long enough to make the drive back into town, agreeing to stop by Snow and Charming’s before heading to the old mansion on Mifflin Street. Emma assures them it’s still there and still in Regina’s name, inexplicably going a little red when she mentions she’s been stopping by and doing basic upkeep since they disappeared, which does something to allay Regina’s half-founded fears that she’d be coming home to graffiti and broken windows.

 

Regina would honestly have preferred the additional time and opportunity to stretch her legs that the walk back town would have afforded them, but neither Henry nor Emma want to leave their cars behind. Henry nudges her toward Emma’s cruiser, and Emma is looking at her so full of hope and uncertainty that Regina can’t do anything but climb into the passenger seat of the cruiser and endure five minutes of neither of them knowing what to say to each other, even as the dread mounts in her stomach with every foot of blacktop they put behind them.

 

But for all that, her magic still runs through these streets, still thrums in the trees and buildings that go by in the awkward quiet, and their welcome and recognition of her lights up the neural pathways of her mind. Storybrooke always changes in increments between her visits, and it always makes her heart twist just slightly. A new storefront on Main Street, a new park, an institution like Granny’s changing hands and names - it always feels to Regina like watching her son go off for four years and rediscovering him to be still Henry, but also something unquantifiable and unknown; and as welcome as it is to feel the magic of Storybrooke running through her veins again, it also contributes to her general unease of being just out of place.

 

Emma breaks the silence once she’s put the car in park and killed the ignition, the Charmings’ home looming over them. “Can we talk?” she asks.

 

“What, now?” Regina asks, a little incredulous, but she’s already preparing herself for whatever monumental thing Emma has been psyching herself up to say.

 

“No,” says Emma, flustered, and Regina sinks back into her seat in something between disappointment and relief. “I mean, I know there’s family stuff, and you guys need to get settled and figure out what you want to do next. But after, when you’ve, you know, had a chance to breathe.”

 

It’s such a transparent attempt to take pressure off of her that it makes Regina smile a little bittersweetly. There are things they need to talk about, but Regina can still feel the phantom pressure of Emma’s arms around her, her hand on her cheek, and she finds she’s in no hurry to dispel it.

 

“Yes,” she says. “I’d like that.”

 

Henry has pulled up behind them, and Lucy is already spilling out of the backseat and bouncing over to them.

 

“Well,” Regina says. “Shall we?”

 

 

 

 

  
  
Inevitably, the _hello we’re not missing anymore_ check-in they’d meant the stop at the Charmings’ to be devolves into what promises to be a four hour reunion that Regina can’t politely escape. Snow opens the door to reveal that David, Neal, and Hope are already home with them and in the middle of dinner.

 

“ _Regina?”_ Snow gasps, and embraces her tightly. “Oh my God. Henry, Ella, oh, Lucy!”

 

Even more inevitably, between Snow’s arm clutching hers, Emma’s eyes following her around the room, and waiting for the handless wonder to appear, Regina is ready for a breather about five minutes in. She escapes to the porch and manages about a minute and a half to herself before the door opens and closes behind her.

 

Regina turns, and her breath catches.

 

It had been easy to resent Hope Jones when she’d been nothing more than the slight swell of Emma’s abdomen, incontrovertible evidence of a barrier between the two of them that could never be resolved. She’d first met Hope when Hope had been about eleven months old and just starting to toddle about. Hope had put her chubby hand on Regina’s leg to leverage herself up and looked at Regina with Emma’s smile, and that had been it - Regina had been in love with this tiny girl as instantly as she’d been in love with Henry. She’d spent most of Regina’s visits in Regina’s arms or lap, and Regina mourned that she’d never have the chance to act as something like an aunt or godmother to her the way she did to Neal and Robyn, the way she surely would have done if she’d remained in Storybrooke.

 

“Hope,” she says. “Hello.”

 

“You know who I am?” Hope asks curiously, and takes a hesitant step towards her.

 

“I do,” Regina says. “You can come closer. I don’t bite, you know.”

 

The look she gets is pure Emma, and it makes her laugh. Hope comes to stand next to her, apparently pleased with herself at Regina’s amusement.

 

“You’re Regina,” she says.

 

“That I am,” Regina says, surprised. “You remember me?”

 

“I think you were around some when I was little. Is that right?” Hope asks.

 

Regina dips her head, nodding slowly. “You did. We were good friends when I came to visit.”

 

“But then you went missing,” Hope says.

 

Regina freezes, not sure how to respond. Technically it’s true; but she’d also paid her last visit to Storybrooke around the time that Hope had been seven - a full five years ago. She finds she doesn’t need to worry, since Hope is barrelling on ahead.

 

“You taught my mom magic, right?” Hope asks. “She said you’re way more powerful than even she is.”

 

Regina snorts. “If your mother would focus, it would be the other way around. But don’t tell her I said that.”

 

“I won’t,” Hope says, grinning tentatively. “Is it true you created Storybrooke?”

 

“Yes,” Regina says slowly, since it was truer that she’d cursed it into existence, though she felt oddly hesitant to nitpick those particulars with Hope. Something about her wide eyes is giving Regina pause, but she can’t quite put her finger on it.

 

Lucy chooses that moment to join them outside, slamming the Charmings’ front door behind her.

 

“Grandma, we were looking for you!” she says, and stops when she sees Hope. “Oh, hi! I’m Lucy.”

 

Gamely, Hope shakes her niece’s proffered hand. “I’m Hope.”

 

“You’re Emma’s daughter,” Lucy says, realizing, developing a touch of the wide eyes herself at the mention of Emma. Before she’d come out here, Regina had noticed that Lucy had unsurprisingly already attached herself to Emma, eager to figure out the distance between her own scarce memories, Henry’s book, and Regina’s stories. “That makes you my... aunt!”

 

“I guess,” Hope says, laughing a little. “Kind of weird since we’re sort of the same age.”

 

“You’ll run into that a lot in this family,” Regina advises them. “Curses do a real number on ages.”

 

“Right! This is my grandma,” Lucy tells Hope, gesturing to Regina. Hope looks bemusedly between them, not realizing the number of times that strangers have mistaken Lucy for Regina’s daughter since they’ve been cursed back to this realm.

 

“Technically that has more to do with my magic,” Regina tells Lucy, which seems to bring Hope back around to her line of questioning.

 

“Did you really break a curse with with true love’s kiss?” she asks.

 

Regina’s brow furrows at the mention of it - they hadn’t discussed particulars of what had been going on in Storybrooke or Hyperion Heights in the five minutes she’d been inside, and she doubted there had been enough time to recount them even while they’d all been out here.

 

“Yes,” Regina says. “But how did you know?”

 

“Mom said,” says Hope, and it hits Regina that she’s talking about something that happened years ago - a thirteen year old Henry with his memories just restored, and a relieved kiss she hadn’t meant to break a curse.

 

The wide eyes are starting the make a little more sense. “Hope,” Regina begins doubtfully. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

 

“Mom told me,” she says again, shrugging, as if the fact of Emma telling her daughter stories about Regina isn’t a big deal at all.

 

Lucy whacks Regina’s arm in excitement, and a bewildered Regina can’t bring herself to chastise Lucy when she sees how her eyes are shining. “Like you told me!” she exclaims, and Regina realizes she’s right. While Regina had spent months unconsciously building an image of Emma in Lucy’s mind, Emma had been doing the same with Hope, but about Regina.

 

“She said you’re a hero,” Hope tells her, causing Regina to gape.

 

“I’m not, Hope,” Regina says. “I’m just a person.”

 

“But she did break my step-grandma’s curse!” Lucy pipes up helpfully. “And she took down the barrier around Storybrooke with your mom! And she made my dad believe in our family when he didn’t have his memories!”

 

“Lucy,” Regina chides softly, because the way Hope is looking at her is making panic rise inexplicably in her chest.

 

“What? It’s all true,” says Lucy, catching Regina’s look. “You _are_ a hero.”

 

Suddenly, it’s too much. Regina stands abruptly and starts walking down the path toward the street. “I need to go, girls. I’ll be back, I just need a moment.”

 

“Grandma!” Lucy’s calling after her, but it’s too late. Regina’s magic envelops her in a balm of purple smoke, familiar and seductive, and when it disappears she’s in front of 108 Mifflin.

 

The house is perfectly unchanged from the outside, and she expects, once she lets herself in with a hint of magic, that it will be like walking into a mausoleum, regardless of whatever Emma’s done to keep up the place.

 

There’s no dust, true to Emma’s word, and the grandfather clock is still ticking away in the stillness of the room. The lights still come on when Regina flicks the switches, and the refrigerator hums from the kitchen. Everything is as neat and orderly as the day Regina had last left it... with a few exceptions that make her heart race.

 

In the living room, two blankets are haphazardly crumbled on the couch and floor, and a TV remote rests within easy reach on the arm of the couch. Upstairs, two bedrooms that had always lain dormant and empty have been claimed, one with a still-damp towel thrown on the bed and magic books from her vault stacked high on the end tables, the other neat and tidy with sixth grade schoolwork spread out on the desk by the window. In the kitchen, the refrigerator is stocked with fresh food, her freezer with ice cream Regina hasn’t bought in fifteen years, and junk food Regina has _never_ stocked lines the counter space. There are rinsed-off pots and pans in the sink, and Regina’s lip curls instinctively as she rolls up her sleeves and reaches to turn on the water. _How many times -_

 

“Figures that that would be the thing you couldn’t let lie.”

 

Regina whirls around and finds Emma perched on the counter behind her, smirking slightly, knowingly, at Regina. Her hands squeezing the edge on either side of her thighs are the only thing that gives away her nerves.

 

“How many times have I told you not to do this to my cookware?” Regina demands.

 

“Really? Not ‘thanks for keeping the lights on’? It’s the pans you’re worried about?”

 

“I have to start somewhere,” says Regina. “Pans seem like a manageable place to start, especially when by ‘upkeep’, you apparently meant _you’ve been living here_.”

 

“Are you upset?”

 

“Upset?” Regina asks. “No, of course not. Surprised that you and Hope are here, and not in a house on the other side of town with your husband? Perhaps.”

 

“Are you really that surprised?” Emma asks, eyebrow raised, and Regina’s temper flares despite her best efforts because it had been a valid question.

 

“Honestly? Yes,” she snaps. “I thought you were going to stick it out with him forever, no matter how miserable you were with him.”

 

Instantly, she knows she’s struck too deep too quickly, but it’s been a very long day, and she’s been keeping that one to herself for the better part of fifteen years. Emma’s expression darkens, predictably, and her hands tighten on the countertop again, this time out of anger.

 

“Yeah, and you were always too happy to make snide remarks about it instead of saying it outright,” says Emma, and because she’s right, Regina scowls.

 

“Yes, because that would have done anything,” she says. “If I’d dared to try such a thing, you would have left me in the cold even faster than you did.”

 

“What are you talking about,” Emma says indignantly. “You’re the one that left _me_!”

 

“You left me first!” Regina cries. “I didn’t have a choice, it was go with Henry or waste away here for an eternity, watching you have a happiness that would always exclude me!”

 

“I didn’t exclude you,” Emma says, but her face is showing signs of worry. “Did I?”

 

Regina laughs, bitterly. “Henry left, and you decided there was nothing holding us together anymore. I saw so little of you that by the time you told me you were pregnant, we hadn’t seen each other in more than passing in a month. So you tell me - what exactly was it that I should have fought for?”

 

“Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” Emma asks. “I would have - “

 

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Regina counters. “You were blissfully in your honeymoon stage. Any time I tried to talk to you about anything wasn’t about Henry, you deflected. And then there you were, starting a family that I could never be a part of, and I knew that’s how it would always be - me on the outside, for the rest of my life.”

 

“So you gave up?” Emma asks evenly.

 

Regina bites back yet another childish retort of _you did first_. “Yes, I gave up.”

 

“Our friendship meant that little to you?”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” says Regina, seething. “Our friendship meant _everything_ to me. You were the most important thing in my life after Henry for years. You were the one who chased down my friendship and made me believe I could be happy, that maybe I even deserved to be happy. And then you took it away and all I was left with was this _hope,_ ” she spits, disgusted with herself even now, “that I could be happy, even after a lifetime that proved otherwise.”

 

“Well,” Emma says. “It sounds like you’ve got everything figured out. Maybe I should just go.”

 

“ _Don’t you dare_ ,” Regina says again, moving fast to ensure Emma stays put, as she is looking like she really does mean to hop the counter and storm out of the house. “You were the one who wanted to talk. You are not leaving me again.”

 

Emma laughs derisively. “That’s rich, coming from the person who left and _never came back._ ”

 

“I came back,” Regina says defensively.

 

“For visits that lasted less than a week, every few years!” Emma says. “I thought you wanted some time with Henry, which made sense, so I didn’t question it. I waited for you to come home for years. You want to talk about _me_ starting a family you weren’t part of? It took me until Lucy was born that I figured out that you were doing the exact same thing - and that you were never coming home.”

 

“ _You_ were the one who was pregnant!” Regina says, caught between anger and incredulity.

 

“You were the one who _left_!” Emma shoots back. “I might have been pregnant, but I didn’t cut you out of my family!”

 

“What the hell, Emma,” Regina says, exasperated. “You are by definition a part of this family. Or have you forgotten the fact that you’re Henry’s mother?”

 

“Birthmother,” Emma corrects.

 

“ _Mother_ ,” Regina insists. “You think we weren’t waiting for you to visit? You think Henry didn’t miss you desperately? You think Lucy understands right now why she has her memories back, but still doesn’t remember her own grandmother?”

 

“That’s not fair,” says Emma. “There was no room for me over there, you were doing just fine without me.”

 

“That’s not even remotely true.”

 

“ _That’s what it felt like to me!_ ” Emma says, and looks down at her legs. “It felt like when our son moved on, you moved on with him, and I was just… here. There was nowhere else for me to go. Especially not once we put up the protection spell around the town again.”

 

“Emma,” Regina says past a sudden lump in her throat. “Why didn’t you say something?”

 

“Like what? _Neither of us is happy, but at least you got out?_ ”

 

“Is that what you think, that I wasn’t just as trapped?” Regina asks, baffled. Emma knows her better than this - it’s taken twenty five years, and she’ll never admit to it while her rage and hurt is boiling this hot, but Regina knows _herself_ better than this. Her prison has always followed her around in the shape of her own mind. It’s never mattered where she’s gone or what boundaries she’s tried to cross.

 

“I think you had the courage to get out of the trap when you could,” Emma says. “And I think you saw the trap for what it was, which is more than I can say about myself.”

 

The defeat in her tone makes all of Regina’s self-righteous anger melt away in an instant. It reminds her of an Emma who had just acquired the powers of the Dark One, timid and soft-spoken like she’d needed to compensate for the murderous thing she’d taken inside her. Regina hadn’t known how to react to her then, had only just started sharing lunches and tender smiles and the weight of their souls between them. She’d wished later that she’d been more used to the intimacy of it - that maybe it would have been second nature to offer the Savior her affection in quietly demonstrative ways as well as the louder, self-sacrificial ones.

 

This Emma before her is a stranger, similar but different, changed by all the years between them, but Regina won’t make that mistake again.

 

“Emma,” she says, taking her hand. “What trap?”

 

Emma shrugs self-consciously, looking like she’s sorry she brought it up, but she doesn’t tug her hand back from Regina’s. Regina marvels at the simplicity of this, the two of them here together, just two women. She marvels at the miracle of it, too.

 

“You know, while we were cursed in Seattle, Henry wrote a book,” Regina says offhandedly when it’s clear that Emma isn’t going to continue.

 

Emma looks up at that. “Yeah?” she asks, gratitude for the subject change infusing her voice. “Is it any good?”

 

“Of course,” Regina says, affronted despite still not having read it. “It’s our son. Magic wasn’t accessible over there, of course, but between his memories and the powers of the Author, I think a little snuck through anyway. Lucy was the one who brought us all together around it. I was the first one to get my memories back while everyone else was asleep, so it was just her and me for a long time. Or Lucy, me, and the book, that is.”

 

“Were we in it?” Emma asks, faintly amused.

 

“We were,” Regina confirms. “Lucy had questions, and no qualms about asking them. There was this one illustration I kept coming back to. Couldn’t get away from it no matter how hard I tried.”

 

“Which one?” Emma asks. Her face is trembling with hope, like she already knows what Regina is going to say. Perhaps she does.

 

“‘ _The Savior Takes On the Dark One’s Powers’,_ ” she says, and Emma’s eyes slip closed. “I can still see it,” says Regina, distantly. “Me in a cloud of darkness, you with the dagger, lights flashing all around us. It was the strangest thing, looking at the way we were drawn. It was like we were trapped there. Like we weren’t even real. I wondered sometimes if I was real - if I was just as crazy as everyone was telling Lucy she was.”

 

Emma clears her throat, grimaces uncomfortably. Regina squeezes her hand to encourage her. “You asked what the trap was?” At Regina’s nod, she says, “I think that was when I fell into it. And I just didn’t want to know about it for a long time.”

 

“The Dark One?” Regina asks past the pain in her own throat, because hadn’t she always suspected this?

 

“Me trying not to be the Dark One,” Emma says. “I made a lot of really bad decisions, and I made worse ones trying to fix them or justify them, and it got to the point that - what was the point of trying to get out? I thought that was just it, this was my life now. And everybody was so happy the further down that road I went that I just… I don’t know… fell asleep. And it was just easier the more asleep I was.” Emma laughs again, but it’s dark and self-conscious. “If that makes any sense.”

 

“Emma,” Regina says, waiting until Emma looks up at her to make her point. “You are talking to the queen of bad decisions. Literally.”

 

That at least makes Emma’s lips quirk. “I guess that’s true. Huh.”

 

Regina rolls her eyes to hide her relief. “Why didn’t you talk to me? I have been in that exact place, you know.”

 

“Because I knew it would just make you feel worse, and you were already feeling pretty bad,” Emma says. “I saw the way you pulled away from me when I was the Dark One, and it wasn’t your fault, I didn’t blame you.”

 

Regina’s mouth is dry. “You thought I felt guilty?”

 

“I knew you felt guilty,” Emma corrects. “And I wanted so badly for you to be happy, but clearly I was in no place to make anyone feel happy, let alone you, which just… made everything worse.”

 

Regina can’t speak, and so she doesn’t even try, just presses her other hand to Emma’s so that it’s encased between hers.

 

Emma keeps her eyes just past her, as though it’s too difficult to look at her as she continues. “And then I was married, and then I was pregnant, and then you and our son were gone,” she says, and finally meets her eyes. “I knew you’d been hurting, Regina. But I didn’t think it was going to make you leave. I’m sorry.”

 

Regina’s already stepping between between Emma’s legs, reaching up for her face and bringing it down so that her lips press, shaking, to Emma’s forehead. Emma sighs a helpless sob at her touch, and two tears skip down Regina’s cheeks, and for a long moment, everything is blessedly still.

 

“What changed?” Regina manages when she eventually pulls back onto her heels.

 

Emma laughs a little. “You. You and Henry. You didn’t make contact for a long time, and we were all getting nervous when you wouldn’t respond to our attempts to contact you. I stole a bean and jumped through a portal. When I saw the level of destruction - no sign of Henry and Ella, Lucy, _you_ \- it was… I don’t know how to describe it. It was like someone had shocked me awake, and I finally realized I’d been asleep. I couldn’t even stop long enough to think why I had been asleep, or how long, all I knew was that I had to keep moving.”

 

“You thought we were dead,” Regina surmises.

 

Emma nods. “I hoped you weren’t. I couldn’t let myself believe it without even looking, so I came back long enough to get some supplies and jumped back over.” She stops and grins wryly. “What I didn’t know was that Hope had followed me through the portal.”

 

“No,” gasps Regina, even as she’s entirely unsurprised.

 

Emma laughs at her, knowingly. “It runs in the family, apparently.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Regina mutters, thinking about Lucy on a bus going cross country.

 

“It wasn’t a good moment,” Emma admits, “but she’s tougher than she looks. She helped me track down any word of you guys in the surviving surrounding villages. Bailbondsperson skills are pretty translatable between realms, even without technology, thank God, so I had that much going for me. We didn’t find much - which must be down to that curse you owe me a story about - but she’s pretty determined when she focuses.”

 

“Her mother’s child,” Regina says fondly.

 

“It was good for us,” Emma says. “I don’t think she’d really known me, before. And she was so interested in anything that had to do with Henry, or you, and I realized I’d stopped talking about you both a long time ago.”

 

“And Hook?” Regina asks, because she has to know.

 

“Hook... was about as happy as he ever was when I was focused on you,” Emma says ruefully. “It didn’t matter. I knew I had to end things as soon as I saw what had happened. It just took a few weeks of me and Hope being gone for me to come back and tell him, which was honestly a pretty shit move on my part. He didn’t understand, which I got. I hadn’t been talking to him either, which also makes me a pretty shit wife.”

 

“It makes you a human being who had been suffering alone for so long you didn’t know how to talk about it,” Regina says pointedly.

 

Emma smiles faintly and tilts her head. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” she says, “but thanks. He’s not a bad man. He’s a good dad to Hope. He’s just not a good partner to me."

 

There's more that Regina wants to say about  _that_ , but it can come later, when the world isn't spinning dizzily as it opens itself up in front of them. “Your parents have been supportive?” she asks. 

 

“As they can be without knowing the full story,” Emma says. “They always liked Killian.”

 

But Regina isn’t interested in debating the Charmings’ affinity for their son-in-law. “What’s the full story?” she asks. “Assuming that wasn’t it?”

 

Emma’s eyes are naked with longing when she lifts her head again, and it makes Regina gasp.

 

“Please,” Emma says, pleading. “Tell me I’m not too late. Tell me I woke up for _something_.”

 

The moment clicks around them, two women on a page, hyperreal. Regina’s hands press along the solidness of her thighs, and Emma’s eyes go hooded in response, never once straying from Regina’s face.

 

“Emma,” Regina whispers as Emma’s hands find her face, tenderly tucking away her curly hair behind her ears. Emma smiles, eyes suddenly alight.

 

“I love the hair,” she says, and Regina’s about to make a frustrated noise, but Emma saves herself when she leans down and presses her lips to Regina’s.

 

There are no more curses to break, and there are no explosions, no fireworks, just Emma’s warm mouth on hers; but the comfort of it would make her want to weep if she wasn’t already wholly consumed with a fierce desperation. Regina reaches out for her and finds her hips, gratified when Emma takes the hint and slides down to her feet so that they can fit themselves together, and Regina’s hands can sweep from her hips over her back and shoulders and wind into her hair. Emma gasps into her mouth when she tightens her fingers, and Regina thrills at it, half surprised that she can elicit such a response after all these years. She takes advantage, deepening the kiss and tugging again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

 

Regina pulls back before they get too carried away, but keeps her hands on Emma’s cheeks, tenderly stroking her thumbs back and forth over her cheekbones in a bid to maintain contact.

 

“If it’s not too late for me, it’s not too late for you,” she says. “Or for us.”

 

Emma closes her eyes in something like relief, breathing out a shaky laugh. “Okay.”

 

“But I think we need to go slow,” Regina cautions. “Maybe even no more of _that_ for a while until we’ve talked things through.”

 

“Agreed,” Emma says. “As long as you’re going slow with me.”

 

Regina smiles, shakes her head, thumbs Emma’s cheeks and at the still-present damp she finds there. It feels like returning home as a new person, like Storybrooke lighting up in her soul despite all the years she’d abandoned it, realizing how it had never belonged to her, but how she belongs to it irrevocably. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she says.

 

The sounds of someone entering the front door and into the foyer snaps them back to the real world, and reluctantly, they put some distance between them.

 

“Moms?” Henry’s voice calls. “Mom’s phone is off - Emma, we really need your new number - and Lucy wouldn’t take no for an answer, so make yourselves presentable.”

 

“What does that mean?” Lucy asks as she comes into sight. “Emma!” she says, clearly surprised to see her. She reconsiders mid-thought. “Grandma Emma? Grandma?”

 

“Gremma?” Henry suggests cheekily as he comes up behind her.

 

Emma laughs, surprised and free. “Whatever you want.”

 

“Hmm,” says Lucy, but abandons the thought in favor of pursuing whatever she’s noticed between them. “Have you guys been crying? Are you okay?”

 

Regina breathes a sigh of relief that she’s only picked up on that. “More than okay,” she says. “Are your mom and Hope with you?” At Lucy’s nod, Regina leans down to swing her up onto the counter with effort and a little magical assistance. “Let’s get started on dinner, then, and we’ll all figure out where we go from here.”

 

“Together?” Lucy asks, but her gaze is on Emma.

 

Emma glances to Regina, who nods, smiles, takes her hand. In the hall, Hope and Ella’s voices are drawing nearer. Behind them, Henry lays an arm over both their shoulders, and Emma’s other hand reaches up to take his gratefully.

 

“Together,” Emma says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... technically 'the end and they lived happily ever after' but also don't be surprised if there's an epilogue soonish.


	4. One Year Later

 

Roni’s is bustling with the start of the midafternoon rush when Lucy comes in right on schedule. (“Hi Lucy!” the regulars greet her.) Regina smiles to herself, grabbing a glass and making a cranberry sprite. She slides it across the counter just as Lucy hauls herself up into a stool and collapses with a sigh.

 

“Weary of the world?” Regina teases her. “Long day on the job?”

 

“Mom and Dad won’t leave me alone about packing,” she says. “We’ve got a week. I don’t see what the hurry is, especially when Aunt Tiana has all the clothes we need over there.”

 

“And this has nothing to do, I’m guessing, with the fact that you’ll miss Hope and are trying to delay the inevitable?” Regina asks.

 

Lucy glares at her pitifully. Regina cocks her head and raises an eyebrow. “Maybe,” Lucy concedes.

 

“It’s only three months,” Regina reminds her. “You’ll be back in time for the new school year, and I’ll bet that when it’s time to come back here, you won’t want to then, either.”

 

“I guess,” Lucy says. “I’ll just miss you. Where’s Gremma?”

 

Regina rolls her eyes - she still can’t believe _that_ was the suggestion that stuck, but Emma had unpredictably leaned all the way into it. “Working with Detective Rogers on getting through some of the finer details of the program,” she says, referring to the foster child advocacy nonprofit that is Emma and Rogers’ brainchild. Alice might be happily travelling the world with Robyn, but Tilly and her circumstances are never far from Rogers’ mind. “You _can_ go see her, it’s only two hundred feet away.”

 

“Can go see who?”

 

Lucy spins and lights up at the sound of Emma’s voice. “Gremma!”

 

_Ridiculous_.

 

Emma catches Lucy’s hug and sways enthusiastically with her for a moment, before disengaging and leaning over the bar toward Regina.

 

“Hello,” she says, and kisses her briefly, Regina’s hand coming up to her cheek on instinct.

 

“Gross,” says Lucy, wrinkling her nose.

 

“How the times have changed,” Regina remarks, fighting a blush, because she is _not a teenager_. “Last year you were all about your parents kissing.”

 

“To break a _curse._ And those were my parents, not my grandparents.”

 

Emma nods sagely at her, eyes sparking. “She’s got a good point, Regina.”

 

Regina shakes her head fondly. “Are you here for a reason? Or just to gang up on me with our granddaughter?”

 

“Rogers told me to go home,” Emma says. “Said he’s got the next few weeks trying to get the program up and running covered without me, and that I should go talk to my wife?”

 

They aren’t married - yet, and between their respective histories, perhaps not ever - but it never stops warmth flooding Regina’s system to have their relationship so casually accepted and recognized. She shrugs nonchalantly - a dead giveaway, and Emma is onto her in seconds.

 

“What?” she asks suspiciously, eyes narrowed. “You’re making me nervous.”

 

“Talk to your son,” is all Regina offers, spotting Henry walking in. He greets Lucy with a “Have you packed yet?” and Lucy groans theatrically. His eyes fall on his mothers next: Emma with arms folded, Regina with eyebrow raised and hiding a smile.

 

“What?” Henry asks, brow furrowed. “What did I do?”

 

“Son,” Emma says seriously. “Your mother thinks you and I should talk.”

 

Henry rolls his eyes, and Lucy giggles.

 

“Fine, but only because there actually is something I wanted to talk to you about,” Henry says, pulling Emma aside and exchanging a look with Regina. Regina stays behind the bar and encourages Lucy to pull out her homework to give them some space - it’s worth a shot - but keeps her ears keenly attuned to their conversation.

 

“I was thinking… Hope wants to come,” Henry begins quietly.

 

“Oh,” says Emma, unable to mask her surprise. “You mean, you’re asking if she can go? Henry, that’s so sweet. I’m sure she’d love that. She’s already missing Lucy, won’t shut up about it.” She laughs, but the sound rings oddly hollow, and does little to mask the way her tone had deflated.

 

“I _mean_ ,” says their son patiently, “I’m asking if you both would come. Last time you visited wasn’t exactly a vacation for you guys.”

 

“Oh,” Emma says again, and engulfs Henry in a hug that he returns, pretending to wheeze _“Mom, mom_ ” breathlessly at the force of it. It does its job in making Emma laugh, though, which is good because when Emma pulls back she looks longingly over at Regina. Lucy’s starting to look up from her math, and Regina taps it meaningfully to draw her attention back to it before moving stealthily around the bar.

 

“Kid, I’d love to, but I don’t want to leave your mom,” Emma’s saying. Regina smiles to herself, and takes that as her cue to join their conversation.

 

“You know, you don’t _have_ to leave me,” Regina says, slipping an arm around her.

 

Emma startles at her sudden appearance, but leans into her half embrace. “What about Roni’s?” Emma asks. “You can’t leave this place for three months.”

 

Regina huffs. “Tell me again about the places neither of us can leave,” she says dryly, and Emma has the grace to look a little sheepish. Regina can feel her face softening in response, and Henry takes his own cue to leave them alone with a smile. Regina swings herself around so that they’re face to face, and takes Emma’s hand with the one that’s not occupied with holding her.

 

“Emma,” she says. “Don’t you think I’ve been prepared for this, with our family as scattered as it is? Between all the different homes we have?”

 

“But you love this place,” Emma says.

 

It’s true, and Emma knows just how much. On their initial return to Hyperion Heights a year ago, they’d all naturally gathered at a closed-up Roni’s. They’d taken down eight chairs around a table and broken out eight glasses and turned on just enough lights for Regina to play mixologist while Rumpel, Hook, and Alice told her how they’d taken down Gothel and banished Facilier in the two weeks she’d been gone ( _I missed everything?_ she’d demanded, indignant). They’d all eventually left past the “Closed” sign, leaving Roni’s empty and bereft once again, and Emma had been the one to gather up a dejected Regina in her still-hesitant arms and coax her into the idea of reopening.

 

Of course, Regina also remembered how that had devolved into Emma pushing Regina to sit on a table and kissing her until Regina was holding her close with arms and legs, and neither of them were hesitant at all.

 

“You’re blushing. Again,” says Emma, in what’s half actual interest and half deflection.

 

Regina won’t have it. “I love _you_ ,” she says pointedly. “Nathan has been working here for two years, and is more than capable of running this place while we’re gone. I’ve made sure of it, and given him a generous raise to compensate for his added responsibilities besides.”

 

“You planned this,” Emma says with dawning understanding. “Is this what Rogers was talking about?”

 

Regina laughs. “Took you long enough,” she says. “And yes. Before you ask, Rogers told me before I could even ask that there’s a lot of red tape the state and DSHS still has to process before much more can be done, and that he estimates it will take about - “

 

“Three months,” Emma says, eyebrow raised, like she doesn’t already know the answer.

 

“I know you don’t want to leave your work, but it’s as good a time as any. And this is the last chance for a longer trip you might have for a while once things really get up and running,” Regina says, but she’s starting to spook despite herself. “It’s only if you want to go, of course,” she feels compelled to add. “Hope doesn’t know about any of this unless your ex-husband blabbed, so you might want to make that decision soon.”

 

“You talked to Hook?” Emma asks disbelievingly. “Hook _agreed_?”

 

“He’s just waiting for your word,” Regina confirms. “He said something about wanting to spend some time on the sea, maybe hunt down the _Jolly Roger_.”

 

“Wow,” says Emma, and all of Regina’s confidence returns at the sight of her slightly gobsmacked expression. “He would like that.”

 

“Just as I knew he would,” Regina says, unable to suppress all the smugness from her voice. It doesn’t matter when Emma catches it - unsurprisingly - and huffs a little laugh, shaking her head.

 

“I will never understand your relationship,” she tells Regina.

 

“If it makes you feel better, neither will I,” Regina admits, though Emma has never been privy to the fact that she had paid Hook a visit in the middle of his and Emma’s divorce when he was angry and refusing to listen to a heartsick Emma, and has certainly never tied it to his decision to follow his daughter to Seattle and buy a boat. “But I think in the end, we’ve come to realize that all that matters to us is that we love the same people.”

 

“Yeah?” Emma says. “So if I said screw it all, let’s go to Japan?”

 

“I guess we’d be going to Japan,” says Regina. “With appropriate planning, of course, to ensure Storybrooke can still raise us in a crisis.”

 

“Like creating another portal, for instance,” Emma says, eyes flickering to the back room where she, Rumpel, Alice, and Regina had created a standing portal between Hyperion Heights and Storybrooke for the people who know to look for it. Her eyes light up. “Could it be through something we carry with us?”

 

“We are not creating a portkey,” Regina says firmly.

 

“Had to try,” Emma says, but her eyes soften into the wonder Regina knows she’s been pushing back. “You know I don’t really want to go to Japan.”

 

“Okay,” says Regina. “Then what would you like to do?”

 

It’s an embarrassment of options before them, and if she hadn’t already struggled through the fact of it herself, she’d feel it in Emma’s hesitation. She already knows what Emma’s decision will be - _Emma_ knows what Emma’s decision will be - but right now, that isn’t the point, and if Regina understands anything, it’s that.

 

“Sorry,” Emma says, laughing a little. “I’m being ridiculous. It just doesn’t always feel real, you know?”

 

“I know,” Regina says, thumb stroking over the back of Emma’s hand. “But it _is_.”

 

A year ago, she’d been surrounded by family who didn’t know her and fighting her own self and the memory of Emma written throughout Henry’s book and Regina’s own mind. Henry’s second book has been out for months now, and Regina still can’t fully explain the way she breathes easier every time she encounters someone with book in hand who doesn’t recognize her from the illustrations inked by the Author’s pen. This is her story - but she isn’t bound to those pages.

 

She wishes in the next book for an illustration just like this moment: Henry helping Lucy with her homework, Ella having come in from leading her Hyperion Heights revitalization project meeting. The bell tinkling over the door announcing the arrival of Hope with her father, and Lucy turning to intercept them. Rogers and Rumpel tucked two hundred feet away at the station, nearly ready to stop by for their customary Tuesday night drink. The rest of her family a quick hop down the coast or through a portal. The magic of three worlds singing in her blood.

 

And Emma: Emma before her, Emma with her hands wrapped around Regina’s, Emma’s magic twining with hers where their hands are joined, invisible to anyone else who dares look at them. But Regina can see the way it would spill around them on the page, infinitely weaving between them and around their family; and she hopes fervently that this will be the page that people will look at and say with instant recognition, _that’s Regina, that’s Roni, that’s you!_

 

“I’d like to be with our family. I’d like to be with you,” Emma says, and Regina smiles. Exactly as she’d suspected.

 

She can’t help but laugh a little, though, because all she can see is a woman who had snatched her hands out of the air when Regina had been worried and overthinking Emma’s move to Seattle, who had said to her fiercely: _Look, don’t you get it? Wherever you’re going, I’m going too._

 

“Emma, don’t you understand?” Regina says now, and there in Emma’s eyes, she can see the world. “Where you go, I go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is 100% it! Thank you all for coming with me on this ride. (I just wanted them to be happy! *sobbing*) I can't believe it took me this long to start writing Swan Queen, but I am writing a fic for Supernova, so keep an eye out later this year if you're so inclined, and/or come be friends with me on tumblr @tunemyart!

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a simple "Lucy has questions about Emma"/"Swan Queen get a happy ending" fic and turned into (among other things) "Can season 4 Emma be reconciled with season 7 Emma?" The ride's gotten a little bumpier, but they'll get there in the end. Also I have no idea how old anyone is anymore. I tried doing some math which was a mistake so now #magic everyone is beautiful forever. 
> 
> I haven't written fic in six (6) years, so if you want to tell me if I'm doing it okay I would really appreciate it!!


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